


the city of three revolutions

by yavanei



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Sexual Content, and post cap 2 storyline, cold war and kgb history, red room flashbacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-02-16 09:40:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 40,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2264889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yavanei/pseuds/yavanei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They call her by many names. The Widow. The Slavic Shadow. The Red Death.<br/>They call him the Winter Soldier. Russia's deadliest assassin. He has no name.</p><p>Years later, as more of the falsehoods and manufactured memories fall away; her mind brings back a single thread of truth to her. An American's voice, quiet and intense, whispers her name - <i><b>Natalia</b></i> - into her ear at night, and it’s a ghost rattling around in the confines of her brain and in between the shattered spaces of her heart. <i>It’s the color of blood dripping on pure white snow.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There are no names in the Red Room. There are titles. There are numbers. But there are never names.

Natalia is twenty-two when she is taken in. She is told it is an honor, she will be serving her country, but the way the man’s lips curve up into a sick smile, the way his eyes gleam dangerously; she knows this is a lie.

Names…they are a curious thing. Natalia knew her name when she arrived, knew who she was, where she came from, yet every day she lost this.

My name is Natalia Romanova.  
My name is Natalia.  
My name is Natalia R –  
I am one of twenty-eight.  
I am Five.

She is number Five.

They call him the Winter Soldier. Russia’s deadliest assassin. The other girls laugh, say he is nothing but a ghost, and go back to sneaking sweet soya bars they bribed a guard to smuggle in to them. It’s the little things in the Kremlin that keep them going.

Natalia does not agree, though.

She envies the stories she hears, envies each whispered tale of his prowess. She envies him because he has achieved what she cannot – he is no one. He does not have a name, he has only a title. He is the best. It would be easy, she often thinks, to give herself away. To give all her past, every part of herself, to the Red Room, but she cannot. There are pieces of her she keeps buried, safe, where no one will ever find them. It would be easy. But Natalia will never be nameless.

She envies the Winter Soldier.

It is fall of 1956, and a man walks into the training room with General Vasily Karpov. For months the only men Natalia has ever seen in the Red Room are her handlers and the occasional rotation of guards.

This man is different.

She knows it instinctively, and her breath hitches in her throat for the briefest of moments.

* * *

It is winter of 2015, and Natasha Romanoff is rediscovering herself. Retracing steps of her past and staying ahead of old enemies who seek to make her pay for even older sins. She has crept back into her web, and at the moment her web happens to be a lone apartment building on a snowy side street of Saint Petersburg. Her current home, as it is. Home has never meant much to Natasha, though. Home is just another word for temporary. She pulls the red scarf around her neck over her mouth and nose, breathing puffs of warm air against her flushed and chilled skin.

There is no greater danger for a spy than having all your secrets, all your history, unleashed into the world for your enemies to pick at like greedy vultures.

_And you have no one to blame but yourself,_ she thinks, laughs even. It is not something she would have done five years ago, not even something she would have done a year ago if she’s being honest.

When you spend your whole life working as a covert operative, there is no line between who you are and what you do. You are who you need to be for the mission.

_Who do you want me to be?_

She has been everyone and no one. She has lived countless lives, and taken countless more.

The life of a spy is not glamorous, it is nothing to be written down in memoirs, it is nothing you will look back on in twenty years and be proud of. It is being alone. Utterly alone, and utterly lost, at any given moment. You learn to be a stranger at one moment, and someone’s best friend at another.

It is doing bad things for supposedly noble deeds. It is a smoking gun with an empty clip of ammo, and a garrote around someone’s neck. It is dirty, it is messy, and it is inhuman at times. Scratch that. _Most_ times.

But you press on and on, never knowing what moment will break you. Not knowing what the future holds, or if you have a future at all, will make you acutely aware of the cold. And when you’re out in the cold, all you can do is keep your head down and try to survive.

Natasha picks up her pace, wet snow crunching under her black boots as she strolls down the silent street. It is just after dusk, and shadows play on concrete, illuminated only by dim streetlights. Her fingers dig into her coat pocket, drawing out her key, as she turns a corner.

She climbs her way up a set of short, scuffed and stained, winding stairs. Apartment 235 waits to greet her, her only constant companion in this cold.

She halts.

The rug outside is a degree too far to the right –

The deadbolt has been tampered with –

“Amateur,” she mutters under her breath.

She unbuttons her coat, and takes off at a brisk pace back down the stairs. She climbs the side of her fire-escape with ease, pulling her body up silently. She works a thin blade into the paneling of her bedroom window, catches the latch just at the right angle and flips it unlocked. She places the blade back in her pocket and slides the window open quickly and quietly, dropping low to the floor – Glock 26 in hand. She presses her back to the wall of her bedroom, and in her peripheral vision she can see a figure in the kitchen. She waits a moment. This seems too easy, but there’s no one else in the apartment.

She levels the gun at the figure as she enters the room.

"Natalia."

You forget so much when you live so long. Friends elude you, you outlive all family even. You put these things aside. You focus on the mission. You focus on survival.

Yes, Natasha forgets so much.

She forgets so much, until one of the things she’s long since put behind her is sitting at her kitchen table, eyes glinting with a peculiar expression that’s not quite sorrow but not quite happiness either.

Her breath hitches in her throat at that name, just as it did all those years ago.

There is an edge to his voice. It feels like a sharp blade against her throat, a burning on her tongue. She feels as if she’s drowning.

She blinks.

"Steve is looking for you," she says, her voice steady. “What are you doing here?”

He does not respond, but she sees the imperceptible clench and release of his gloved left hand. She keeps the gun raised.

"Natalia," he says her name again, harsher. "You’re older than you look, aren’t you?"

"Aren’t we all," she says glibly.

She wonders if he even realizes he’s speaking Russian. She isn’t Steve, she isn’t even Sam. She doesn’t know how to help him. She has enough to worry about on her own already.

"Why do I…" His voice trails off, and Natasha waits, letting him collect his thoughts. "I remember your name, but not my own."

"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. Your friends call you Bucky.”

His eyebrows furrow in irritation, in frustration, perhaps equal parts confusion. She can’t tell.

"I know," he snaps. "But I don’t remember it. It’s not right. It doesn’t fit. Your name is Natalia. I remember only one name. This is what I remember. I remember Natalia."

It goes deathly quiet between them, but Natasha makes no move to lower the gun or shift from where she is standing.

"Please," his voice breaks on the last syllable, and it tugs at a place deep in her heart. "Who are you?"

* * *

She has been everyone and no one. She has lived countless lives, and taken countless more.

Once upon a time, in an old world, meant for old things, she is a girl in red, a girl with nails and teeth sharpened to a point, a girl who fears nothing – not even death. Once upon a time, she earns a title.

The Red Room plays with her perception of time first.

She is dragged in, hands bound, eyes blindfolded, and her bare feet scrape against concrete as she is hauled down several flights of stairs. When she reaches the bottom, thick rancid air fills her nostrils, and her feet shuffle through puddles of what she thinks is muddy dirt. The muck sticks between her toes and squishes as she stumbles along with the hands holding her. They throw her into a chair next, tying her down at her wrists and ankles.

She does not fight back. There is no use. She knew what awaited her when she accepted recruitment. ( _Accept?_ She laughs bitterly to herself at this thought. There was no real choice in the matter. All things are done for the glory of Soviet Supremacy.)

Minutes stretch to hours as she sits in darkness, but still no one comes to see her. They deny her food and water.

Her head lolls against her neck and she closes her eyes. They are burning and she wants nothing more than to rub the sleep from them. The itching sensation threatens to drive her mad if she focuses on it any longer.

She quickly learns sleep is not allowed when someone awards her with a backhand across her face. Her cheek stings from the contact, and she begrudgingly opens her eyes as much as possible from behind the blindfold.

More time passes. A grime-encrusted hand roughly grips her chin, shoving a glass of water against her lips and her teeth clack from the impact. The hand tips her head back, and gives her only the smallest drop of water – which only serves to worsen her overall thirst.

Minutes stretch to more hours. Hours stretch to days. She doesn't know. She would rather them torture her with noise, she would rather hear anything other than this utter silence. Her wrists are biting at the restraints, her ankles being rubbed raw as she shifts and seeks any semblance of comfort.

The silence soon becomes a ringing in her ears, and her nails dig into the arms of the chair trying to control her panicked breathing. She bites down on her lip and tries to ignore the overwhelming desire for sleep.

She begins to count in her head, counts backwards to the time when she arrived here. Counts forwards to the amount of time that has passed. What has been it been? Eight hours?

No, that isn't right.

Twelve?

No, that's not it either.

She thinks it has been three days by the time she is screaming, screaming just to hear her own voice, to reassure herself that she is real. She thrashes against her restraints and against the chair in a futile attempt to break it. It is no use, she knew the moment she sat down it was bolted into the floor.

Every other hour someone comes to check on her, to make sure she stays awake. (At least she thinks it's every other hour.)

Her eyes enlarge off and on in the urge to stay awake, but it’s not enough. Every day it worsens. An itchy, burning feeling eats at her from behind her eyelids. A haze has long since formed in her head, clouding everything about her arrival.

She is not afraid of the dark, nor is she afraid of what awaits her after the dark.

She chants this over and over. Lies to herself until she _believes_ it.

_You are not afraid of the dark or what awaits you after the dark, Natalia._

_You are not afraid of the dark or what awaits you after the dark, Natalia._

The hunger and thirst is nothing compared to the overwhelming desire for sleep.

There is no telling how many days have gone by when she feels a set of wiry hands around her head, pulling her blindfold off. She immediately averts her eyes from the glaringly bright spotlight shining in her direction. Two figures are hidden in shadows behind it.

Her eyes adjust slowly, but she keeps them downcast.

"How long have you been here?" one of the figures asks her.

She knows this is a test. Everything is a test.

She does not respond.

_You are not afraid of the dark or what awaits you after the dark, Natalia._

One of them approaches her, and another backhand is her reward.

Natalia’s head snaps at the impact, and she spits blood onto the concrete floor.

She turns and grins at the man with crimson teeth.

“Do you think this is a game, comrade?”

Another backhand.

Natalia’s head droops down, tongue tasting the blood inside her mouth, her red hair dirty and tangled in front of her eyes. She raises her eyes, sharp and unflinching at the man.

“You tell me,” Natalia spits at his feet.

They shut her back in the dark. They shut her back into the dark and in the suffocation of silence until she forgets pride. They shut her back in the dark until she learns.

* * *

Natasha watches him closely, searching for any signs of hostility as she drags the chair out opposite him and sits.

His hands unfold when she sits, and he begins running his thumb back and forth against the smooth glass table, stroking it in uneven patterns.

In the dim light, she notices his eyes are bloodshot to hell and back, worn creases gathered about them, and his beard is in desperate need of a shave. His hair is not much better, still as disheveled as she remembers it, and lazily pushed behind one ear. There’s a deep cut on his right hand, between his thumb and index finger, and his thumb taps loudly against the glass when he catches her looking at it.

She raises her eyes back to his, hesitant, still not entirely sure how she wants to handle this. He does not speak, simply watches her – waits. He licks at cracked lips, pulls his bottom lip between his teeth for a moment, sucking in a breath.

“You didn’t exactly hide your entrance,” Natasha looks pointedly at the door.

“I wasn’t trying to,” he says, matter of factly.

She nods, accepting this. He only came looking for answers, after all.

"You trained me," she begins. "Though you were not the first to do so. There have been others."

She does not say the next thing that comes to her mind. She does not say, _but you were my favorite. You were my favorite. You and you alone._

"You were my favorite," his voice is distant, as if recalling an old memory.

Natasha’s eyes widen, briefly startled, but she quickly masks this. His pale blue eyes gaze back at her, and there’s recognition in them. Her heart thumps in her chest, and she curses herself. She is too old for this. Too old to remember the way his hands felt against the small of her back. Too old to remember the hot breath against her neck. Too old to remember a girl’s fantasies.

But some part of him remembers her, and she’s not sure if this is a blessing.

“Why are you here?” she asks. “You followed me?”

“Not exactly,” he leans back in the chair, his voice getting raspier by the minute – as if it hasn’t been used in days. “I came to find someone. Came across you when you were leaving Liteyny Avenue. Happy accident.”

He tugs the corner of his lip up like it’s a joke, but there’s something off in his expression, something that leaves the smile looking more intimidating than it should.

“Get to the point.”

“It’s a diplomat. He’s in Hydra’s pocket. I remember him, and I want answers from him.”

She hesitates for a bare fraction of a second.

“So, what is your plan of – ”

“What was that?” he interrupts her, leans back over the glass table, splaying his hands out toward her as he fixes her with a focused stare.

_Damn. He’s good._

“What was wha –” she feigns, but he interrupts her again.

“You’re here for the same reason, aren’t you?”

Anyone else would have missed that imperceptible fraction of hesitation, but he doesn’t. He’s still as good as she remembers. Better, even, from the looks of it. Better now that his programming is being broken down piece by piece.

“Don’t get in my way, Barnes,” she says.

“He worked for Hydra, I remember him. I remember what they did to me. You can either help me on this, or I can take care of it myself, and you won’t be able to control the outcome.”

She sees his fingers twitch, but he compensates quickly by making a fist to cover the action.

If she’s being honest with herself, Natasha can’t tell whether or not she should trust him. He may remember training her from the 1950’s but there’s no telling if he’s the same person anymore. That’s what happens when you strap someone down to a chair and try as hard as possible to tear out their humanity.

But Natasha knows from experience, knows from her own resolve, that you can never truly strip away someone’s will.

So, she relents.

“Fine. But we do this my way.”

All right, so she doesn’t _entirely_ relent. It’s not in her nature.

* * *

It comes back to him in flashes, incoherent, jumbled. But it comes back.

It is fall of 1956, and Department X has loaned him to the Red Room. He is to train the girls. The Red Room has already gone over basic training with them, but they like to send him to break them in - or simply _break_ them.

The Red Room is aptly named, walls painted red, lined with red rugs and red training mats. It seems there is no escaping the color these days.

As his eyes scan the room, he catches one of the recruits openly watching him. The other girls avoid his eyes, or at least they pretend to. They know why he is there, and they are each discreetly attempting to size him up in their own way.

But she looks at him, openly, and without rancor. She looks…thrilled? He can’t quite place the expression on her face, nor does he know how to react to it. It isn’t normal.

Her red hair is short, loose curls cropped just above her neck - about the same length as his own.

She pulls the fine strands into a ponytail with two hands – the tie hangs precariously between her teeth and full lips – as she continues to stare at him, green eyes sharp and unmoving. Something wicked flashes in them.

He decides he will save her for last.

It is the third day of training, and he is acutely aware of the way her eyes burn into his back, aware of the keen fascination she regards him with, just as he is aware of the dodged glances and the furtive whispers of the other girls, just as he is aware of every exit and entrance in the building, every guard on duty and when their shifts rotate, and every possible opening for an attack. There is nothing that gets past the Winter Soldier.

But she is the first to regard him with interest rather than fear. Her eyes never leave him. They travel appreciatively over his metal arm, over his features, as if she’s challenging him to make eye contact with her.

He ignores her.

He unlaces his boots, and steps barefoot to the middle of the room. Mechanical. Focused. He starts where he left off with number Ten, and works his way down in number – all the way down from twenty-eight. The red head gives an exasperated sigh when he completely skips her number and moves onto Four.

Four.

She has braided thick black hair and is half his height with shapely curves. She rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet and muscles tense in her shoulders as she shifts her weight, settling into a fighting stance. She is impatient, he can tell this easily enough. This must be rectified.

He waits.

Four makes a perturbed noise in the back of her throat, and lunges at him. The Winter Soldier dodges her clumsily thrown fist and his metal hand grasps her wrist with little difficulty, spinning her and pulling her body against his into a tight hold.

Against his better judgment, the Winter Soldier’s eyes flick up, and they meet the red-head’s across the room.

She stares him down.

_Snap._

He twists, hard, breaking number Four’s wrist.

The red-head does not waver.

_Crack._

He dislocates number Four’s shoulder, and the noise echoes throughout the room.

The red-head does not flinch.

This irritates the Winter Soldier. He shoves the crying girl away from his grasp, into the arms of her waiting handlers, and she is dragged away.

He has become accustomed to people avoiding eye contact with him, even those who call themselves his superiors hate to look him in the eyes.

He goes through the same motions with Three, and Two. When One enters the ring, the redhead seems to ascertain she will be last. She pulls her hair into short ponytail, bends her knees, sitting with her head in her hands as she watches in mute fascination. The way she looks at him, eyes bright and determined, creates an odd tension in his chest but he doesn’t understand what it means.

He snaps his leg, side-kicking the tall blonde on the inside of her thigh. When his foot connects, he sees the red-head smirking from the corner of his vision. One’s slender frame collapses onto the red mat, her knee twisting with a sickening sound. The impact breaks her bones, and she pinches her lip between her teeth to keep from crying.

When he looks up, Five is still smirking. Her nose even crinkles in amusement.

The Winter Soldier acts because the mission dictates it. The Winter Soldier moves because the mission dictates it. The Winter Soldier has protocol, the Winter Soldier has orders. The Winter Soldier does not want, does not desire, and does not care.

He does not want –

He serves the Motherland.

He does not care –

He has protocol.

He does not –

He does not – he – he –

He _wants_ to break the red head.

When the last girl is out of his sight, he snaps his head in her direction. His fingers involuntarily twitch.

"Five," he motions for her to step forward.

She rises from her position, her spine going ramrod straight as she comes to stand in front of him.

"You’re the Winter Soldier, aren’t you?" she asks.

The other women in the room begin speaking to each other in hushed and frantic whispers. They all know he is the Winter Soldier - it was obvious the moment he stepped foot in the facility, but none of them dared ask. The majority of them are still reeling from the revelation that the Winter Soldier is in fact _real_.

"I am."

She is overconfident. This must be rectified.

Without warning, he lunges at her. His fist narrowly misses her face, blurring right by her. She dodges, bends low, snaking beneath his arm, and he feels her knee connect with his solar plexus. She leaps out of striking range, rolling across the mat, as soon as the hit has landed.

It would have knocked the breath out of a weaker man.

He turns to face her, and they begin to circle each other, slow and steady – eyes alert for any possible openings.

"We were told these were sparring sessions," the girl speaks again.

The Winter Soldier can feel something intangible grating against his mind when she speaks – her voice burrows straight into his skin. He narrows his eyes, ignoring the shiver arcing across his body.

"They are," he says, his voice even.

Her mouth curves into a slight grin. “In sparring you don’t usually break bones.”

His lips press together into a fine line as he appraises her. She is attractive, no doubt, as all the women in the training program are. They would not be worthwhile if they weren’t. She is different, though. He can tell she has received training before this, was perhaps even a soldier at one point. She carries herself with an ease of self-assuredness in a way the others don’t. She is trying to drive his reactions – attempting to bank on him making a mistake that will give her the upper hand. It’s what any well trained operative would do.

Is this her play, then? An amused noise forces its way from his throat. She is foolish. The Winter Soldier does not make mistakes.

* * *

Natalia watches him curiously for a few moments. The first thing she notices is the faint flicker of emotion – anger, perhaps – that flares in his eyes for a brief moment when she speaks to him before it extinguishes completely. His eyes are otherwise dead, utterly emotionless. He has either perfected the nature of appearing empty, or he is empty.

Department X is known for their scientific trials into the brain. Natalia has heard countless horror stories of the ones who never make it through the trials. Stories of girls and boys that have been chewed apart, driven mad from the inside out by all kinds of sensory deprivation torture, mind controlling techniques, and hallucinogens. You name it, Department X has tried it.

Perhaps the Winter Soldier is the same. A product of their experiments. She scolds herself for not considering it before.

The second thing she notices is his accent is not natural, it is not native. He is not even Russian. The irony of this is not lost on her – the Soviet’s greatest agent, not even truly a Russian. The rumors about him being an American must indeed be true.

The third thing she notices as she darts into striking range and throws a kick that he deftly blocks with his metal hand, is even the rumors have not done him justice.

He is so much more. The Winter Soldier may be nameless, but he is not empty. There is something lurking behind his eyes, an emotion she can’t quite place. Rage, perhaps. Controlled, but bottomless rage. Rage threatening to spill over, rage threatening to engulf everything in its path.

She wonders if she can tip him over. She wonders if she can push him, Russia’s greatest asset, to the brink. She wants to see just how angry she can make him.

Natalia lunges backward, back flipping out of his range before he can grab hold of her leg. They spar back and forth for a minute, and he matches her blow for blow with little difficulty, forcing her to retreat each time before his metal hand comes crashing down hard. None of her attacks even land, nor does she think she’s even tiring him out, but this is the longest any of the other recruits have gone. The rest were sporting broken bones and broken pride not even a minute after entering the makeshift ring. Part of her wonders if he’s purposely prolonging this fight.

She purses her lips and goes low to the ground, assessing her options.

She hears the familiar sound of a knife being drawn before she sees it, and her eyes widen. He flips the combat knife into a reverse grip and he’s on her before she can barely process what’s happening. He did not draw a blade on any of the other girls.

Natalia has no choice but to bring her left arm up to block, earning her a deep gash across her forearm. She hisses in pain, and she swears she catches him flashing a smirk. She grits her teeth, narrowly avoiding another slash of the blade as she dives between his legs and comes up behind him.

She breathes in and out, heavy shaking breaths, and sweat trickles down her forehead, but he barely looks like he’s even winded. She can’t possibly hope to face him like this, not blow for blow. He is much stronger than her, even if she is slightly faster. If she can just –

He turns, quicker than she anticipates, and a broken gasp of air escapes her as his foot connects with her stomach. The attack throws her across the room like a rag doll, and she lands in a tangle of limbs. She tries to stand, but collapses to the ground again. The force of the blow has her convulsing on the floor in pain, her ribs screaming in agony every time a shallow breath pushes its way out of her lungs, and she thinks she may vomit then and there.

Her vision dims and she can feel tears stinging at her eyes. She grunts, squeezing her eyes tight, warding off the water threatening to fall. The last thing she will be seen doing is crying like a child.

When she opens her eyes, she sees his figure stalking toward her. _Walking_ , actually. As if he has all the time in the world. He never moves faster than is necessary, he is never in a hurry, and she hates him for it – hates herself for her own weakness.

Jealousy crops up inside of her.

All the things they put her through to mold her into a dispassionate and loyal servant of the Motherland flashes before her eyes. Ambition. Drive. Passion. These are the things the Red Room tried to leech from her the moment she came into the program. These are the things that come crashing down around her in seconds, jolted to life by the Winter Soldier’s presence, and she forces herself to stand.

Her fists curl at her side, nails digging so hard into her palms she tears her own skin. Her knees shake – her weight supported only by her sheer fury. He sheathes his knife, and she waits. He thinks she has given up, thinks she is too tired to continue, thinks he can break her like he has broken all the others before her, like he will break all those that come after her.

He is wrong.

His metal hand reaches out to grab her, but Natalia expects this, and she moves solely on muscle memory. She lets it take control, lets it drive her fury into action, and she is no longer a body confined by flesh. No longer a body restricted by fatigue. No longer a mind constricted by doubt or fear.

She is a weapon.

Weapons do not fear. Weapons do not tire. Weapons act.

She uses his metal arm as leverage, grabs hold of it with one hand, and launches into the air. Within seconds her lower legs are wrapped around his neck. She immediately twists, swinging her weight right, and they both tumble to the ground, landing far from the mat.

Her spine hits the tile and her body crumples awkwardly - she is sure her back will be bruised for weeks. _Not the best execution, Natalia_. She groans in pain and grips her bleeding forearm with one hand, dismayed to see it has sliced open even further.

From the corner of her eye she can see the Winter Soldier rolling himself to a standing position. She sees a flash of emotion cross his face again, his forehead creases for a moment and then she feels his metal hand hauling her to her feet – not gently. Splotches of dark yellow and purple race across her vision and she is positive if not for his arm steadying her she will hit the ground. She is grateful for this small act of kindness on his part.

“Impressive,” he says, and it’s just loud enough for the rest of the room to hear.

Through blurry vision, Natalia sees the other girls shooting her envious looks, and though she is ready to collapse, though she has broken numerous ribs and will not be able to breathe without pain for the next two weeks at least, a delirious grin flashes across her face.

The Winter Soldier always picks her first after this.

* * *

James cleans his gun over twenty times, times himself as he disassembles and reassembles it over ten times, recounts all of his training in his head, reviews the past tense of every verb in four different languages, but nothing helps.

Natalia was accommodating enough to let him stay in her apartment – though she insisted he shave because he was “starting to look homeless” – but the waiting is what frustrates him most. He is itching to act, itching to move. Itching to point this pent up tension somewhere and fire.

She returns midday, doesn't give him much information, simply tells him she has the tools and weapons they'll need at another safe house. Apparently she has several places like this in the city, and he wonders how she manages to afford that.

He walks side by side with Natalia down Nevsky Prospect, a bustling and noisy main thoroughfare in Saint Petersburg. She is in a blonde wig, hair brushed neatly behind one ear, with dark sunglasses on her face. It’s easy to get recognized when you’re a high-profile Avenger, so she takes the necessary precautions. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his black jacket, trudging through wet ice beside her.

When they turn a corner, someone bumps into him, and he doesn’t think – he reacts. His right hand grabs the man by the collar of his shirt, and his other grips the man’s arm hard enough to break bone, if he squeezes just an inch more –

“Excuse me?!” the man tries to pull away.

He pushes the man against the edge of a storefront’s green wall, its paint fading and flaking away.

“Who sent you?” James barks out.

Hypervigilance isn’t something you can control. When you’ve been in a constant state of mission readiness on and off for seventy years, when you have always been completely and utterly _on_ , when you have _always_ had an operation, it is worse than inevitable. It is with you _always_. To a civilian, that anxiety can turn into directionless fear, but for a trained individual it means a constant hyper-awareness of your surroundings. It is useful, but hardly pleasant.

It means never having a second to relax, constantly feeling like your mind is being stretched to the utter brink, and hardly ever being able to sleep. When you’re in a constant state of alert, the line between what’s a threat and what isn’t can blur very quickly.

Natalia’s hand covers his own, prying his fingers away.

“I’m sorry about my friend,” Natalia responds to the man in Russian. “Americans, you know.”

“Maybe you should keep your friend on a shorter leash,” the man shoots back, smoothing down the collar of his shirt when James releases his grip.

James glares down at the shorter man, and terror instantly writes itself across the planes of his face. He shuts his mouth, and immediately stumbles away – muttering to himself about tourists – as he goes.

Natalia pushes James against the wall, presses her index finger to his chest. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? You need to pull it together, or I am serious, Barnes, I will do this without you.”

The corners of his mouth contort into a small scowl as he looks at her index finger in disgust – he could break it in a heartbeat if he wanted. He can’t see her eyes behind the sunglasses, but notices the way her lips slack open just a smidge in study of him – reading his train of thought if he’s any guess. He doesn’t answer her. A twinge of a smirk appears on those red lips that wasn’t there a second ago, and it completely irritates him to the core of his being for some asinine reason he can’t quite comprehend. He grunts, and shoves her away as he continues walking. Natalia shakes her head, lets out a long sigh once she catches up with him.

“I am trying to help you here, you know,” she says. “I’m on your side.”

“I don’t believe in sides. I believe in results.”

“You won’t get far with that attitude,” she says. “Trust me, I know. I’ve tried it. Even people like us need friends sometimes.”

“Just worry about the job, I don’t need you to hold my hand,” he says, shoving his hands back into his pockets.

Natalia simply chuckles, seemingly unaffected by his words. He doesn’t care if she doesn’t believe him. He’s here to finish off an ambassador with ties to Hydra, that’s all. He doesn’t care about anything else.

The Winter Soldier acts because the mission dictates it. The Winter Soldier moves because the mission dictates it. The Winter Soldier has protocol, the Winter –

James skids to a stop on the sidewalk, brings a hand up to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun as he tries to dispel this train of thought.

That’s not who he is anymore.

* * *

He catches her – no, that’s a lie, he is watching her, he is intently and utterly aware of her at all times – as she runs a hand through wind-torn locks, brushing the strands behind her ear, and silence suddenly presses down on him at all sides. The sound of rhythmic bursts of gunshot is the only thing that punctuates the stillness as he resists the undeniable urge to go to her, resists the pull that’s clawing at him from some mysterious place he never even knew existed before.

He holds his breath.

She pulls the trigger of the rifle, and hits the target dead center. He is intently and utterly aware of her at all times. Aware of the way her body moves, the brutally efficient way she fires a gun, the gracefulness of her body when she downs an opponent.

He has been training her for five weeks now, and she is his favorite. He keeps her longer than he does the other girls, talks to her in English more often than the rest, even spars with her again before the day is over and they each retreat back to their quarters for the night.

He pushes her to the limit, trains her even harder because he knows she’s better than the rest, and it’s not even for her benefit at first. He does it in every attempt to break her, to prove something to himself, but his motives are ultimately feeble. To his surprise, she never once gives up or falters. (She is constantly amazing him like that.)

Her hair is the color of fire, and when she moves it is like she is dancing through space. Her form is perfect, compact, and deadly. After the first week of sparring, they eventually get into a rhythm - sparring goes better once you're familiar with your opponent. She switches up her tactics and even has a better reading on him than she did the first time.

She doesn't even block his strikes anymore so much as she dodges and weaves out of the way. He is fast, but she is faster and knows it. It's become less a training session and more a game to them. It's frustrating, and he's not used to that feeling - not exactly. All he wants is to feel his flesh clash with her flesh, wants that _friction_ , that jolt of _touch_ , but she just keeps ducking and evading and it's driving him absolutely insane.

She is better than the rest. She is his favorite.

Every time he leaves her it is like losing some unknown part of himself. He wants her, wants her in a way he never knew he could want anything before.

The Winter Soldier knows what a man sounds like when he’s stabbed in the back. He knows how it sounds to drive the air from someone’s lungs, that tiny exhale before an imposing body crumples in a heap of nothingness before him.

But he wants to know what it feels like to tangle his hands in her red hair, wonders how different it will feel in his grip compared to a knife. He wants to know the way her breath will sound when he runs his thumb along her red lips. He wants to hear her pulse quicken beneath him, memorize the rhythm of it in the same way he has memorized the specific and distinct sound each and every gun makes when it’s fired.

The Winter Soldier acts because the mission dictates it. The Winter Soldier moves because the mission dictates it. The Winter Soldier has protocol, the Winter Soldier has orders. The Winter Soldier does not –

He does – does not desire –

He has protocol.

He does – does – not

He _desires_ the red head.

She turns suddenly, and he immediately looks away.

Her lips twitch in a small, knowing, smile, and he shifts uncomfortably. He’s the Winter Soldier and he can’t even be discreet enough to keep his…affections? (is that what this is?) to himself.

He musters up a look of indifference and moves to correct one of the other recruit’s posture, intent on ignoring Five for the rest of the day.

* * *

As the weeks go by, Natalia learns how to fight without the use of her senses, first her ears, then her eyes. She learns the names and uses of every poison, and how to administer them. She hones her skills of manipulation with the other twenty-seven Widows, cultivates her body into a perfect tool capable of adapting to any situation, and she learns her introduction to the Red Room was not as fruitless as she once thought. That experience, among others, benefits her as she learns to withstand enhanced, long-term interrogation and torture, and she knows without a doubt she is better at this than the rest.

When she enters the locker room thirty minutes after a sparring session with the Winter Soldier, it surprises her to see him sitting on a bench examining his metal arm. He doesn’t seem to notice her entrance, though, and she watches as he pulls his sweaty shirt over his head.

"Do you make it a habit of watching people undress?”

He speaks to her in English more often than the other recruits, after she told him she was struggling with it a little.

"Only you, comrade," she winks at him.

He laughs, and small lines crinkle around his eyes. The sound forces its way from his throat with a strange abruptness, catching Natalia off guard.

When she first met him, she never expected he would be someone she might come to admire. The first week he trained her, he spoke only the bare minimum in order to further instruction. He was callous and utterly indifferent to anything but the task at hand. She hated it to the very core of her being. She wanted to hear him praise her again, wanted to hear him say she was impressive once more. She kept at him, threw little jabs and teases meant to rankle his cold exterior, desperately waiting for the moment he’d finally snap at her. He seemed irritated at first, even ordered her to stop. She didn’t.

Slowly, something about him changed. Now, he has full conversations with her, he even responds to her jokes with his own teasing at times. He feels more whole, and Natalia isn’t sure if this was her doing, but she enjoys these small, somewhat secret moments between them. It makes her feel whole again too.

He goes back to examining his metal arm. He swings his shoulder around, realigning his muscles before rolling his neck and forcing tension out.

It is only then Natalia notices the extreme scarring where the metal and flesh meets around his shoulder. She grimaces, imagining the unbearable pain of such a surgery.

“Can I?”

She’s not sure why she asks, not sure why she feels the desire, but she has always been curious. He glances up at her, and nods, outstretching his metal arm.

She reaches her fingers out, hesitantly, and nearly withdraws entirely when she sees her hand is shaking. He nods again, gives her an encouraging look.

She runs her fingers over the ridges of metal and paneling, marveling at the smoothness of it. It is cool to the touch, and her fingers graze over the sleek indents easily. He flexes his arm, and she feels it ripple slightly under her touch.

She looks up, and he averts his eyes, tongue darting out, anxiously wetting his lips. His eyes eventually creep back to her, and she stifles a smile.

Her fingers are traveling over his clavicle before she can stop herself, touching the seam where warmth meets cold. She is certain other parts of his body, possibly even parts of his spine, must also be metal in order to facilitate the arm.

“How did you lose your arm?” she asks, fingers still lightly tracing the patterns of scarring. She feels him shiver under her.

“I don’t know.”

“Did the procedure hurt?” she asks.

“I don’t know.”

He grabs her hand suddenly, and tugs her closer to him, placing his metal hand against her lower back. He presses her hand to a spot just underneath his ribs, and he traces her fingers along another scar there.

“How did you get this?”

“I don’t know,” he says for the third time.

She runs her other hand along the angles of his face, and gently pushes a strand of his hair behind his ear. He closes his eyes, and his metal hand massages her at her lower back, rubbing circles through her shirt.

“What is your name?” she asks, barely above a whisper.

He opens his eyes. The answer is the same.

“I don’t know.”

An uncomfortable silence fills the room. Natalia closes her mouth, opens it, and closes it again. She feels as if the air has been sucked out of her. It is one thing to enter the training facility and have her name taken from her. It is another to never know your name at all.

And so she says the only thing she can think to say, she says….she says…

"I’m so sorry."

She wishes someone said sorry to her when she was fighting in the trenches, wishes someone said sorry to her when she lost a child, she wishes for so many things she has left unsaid.

He meets her eyes with a tortured expression, and a sad smile flits across his face. She has never seen him look so vulnerable, and five weeks ago she did not even think it possible for him to show this side.

"I will tell you my name, because you don’t know your own," she takes his metal hand in hers and kisses the cold knuckles. "Natalia."

He seems to weigh the word, tasting it on his mouth before he says it. “Natalia.”

He kisses her then, and she stills, not expecting the warmth of his lips. It is awkward at first, his lips are unused, out of practice, and it’s a stark contrast to the way the rest of his body has been shaped and molded and practiced over and over into being a perfect tool. He is not perfect at this, though. He is only human when he kisses her – no longer a weapon to be used.

When he pulls away, he looks slightly ashamed.

“I shouldn’t –” he pauses, “They will ship us to Siberia or worse. We cannot – ”

She raises her hand to his chin, thumb gliding over the light scruff on his cheek.

"Rules were meant to be broken, лапушка.”

She presses her lips to his, soft, and slow. His flesh hand tangles in her red curls, and something seems to ignite in the Winter Soldier. All pretense fades in the span of a single kiss. Ice and cold and frost melt from him, and she can feel the sensation to the centre of her body, can tell she affects him in the same way he affects her. He presses her tighter against his body, and kisses her hungrily. He is a dying man coming up for air, pouring every frustration, every burden, every single choice that has been stolen from him into her.

When she pulls away for air, he laughs against her mouth, raising an eyebrow at her. “лапушка?”

“You’ve never heard it?”

“No, it’s just,” he laughs again. “I’ve only ever heard it used for women and children.”

She rolls her eyes, and punches him lightly on the shoulder. “Idiot.”

* * *

 A week later she runs into him in the hallway on her way to the firing range. They try to move past each other, he goes one way, she goes the same way, and then they do the same on the opposite side and –

Natalia finally stops moving, laughing at this awkward shuffle, and extends a hand to touch his arm.

He backs away, two small steps, before her hand can even reach him.

Natalia’s forehead creases in confusion. The Winter Soldier shifts his weight, back and forth, as if he’s not quite sure what to say, and avoids meeting her eyes. There's something off about his expression, his eyes are lifeless, and it reminds her of when they first met.

"They are sending me to Hungary,” he says, finally.

He flicks his eyes to meet hers then, and she sees nothing but absolute defeat in them. He is withdrawing from her, she realizes, with a sick twist in her gut.

She shouldn’t be surprised. She has heard rumblings of an uprising in Hungary since October. The Republic will crush them, and he will be their fist. She nods, accepting his words. It was a courtesy on his part to even tell her this. She has no right to information about his assignments in the first place.

When he leaves in the morning, there is a cold snap, and she can’t help but find it fitting. Natalia stares out the window, eyes vacant as she watches the heavy snowfall roll in. Several minutes pass. She presses a hand to the chilled glass, and closes her eyes. _Nothing lasts in the Red Room, you foolish girl._ Her hand clenches into a tight fist against the pane.

They give her the serum the next day.

Professor Rodchenko straps her down to a firm table, it is far too short and her cold feet hang off the edge. Something stirs in the base of her throat, as if her body knows what is coming before even her mind does.

She is the best, after all.

Her nails bite into her skin so deep she bleeds, and it feels like her entire body is being reshaped and remolded from the inside out. She screams until she is hoarse, thrashes against her restraints until she breaks her own wrist trying to escape the bindings.

Professor Rodchenko says nothing, simply writes in his notepad and mutters to himself in short, incessant phrases. He barely even seems to register her pain. He does not care.

She hates them every day a little more.

On November 4th, 1956, Soviet tanks roll into Budapest, and somewhere, somewhere in the midst of smoke and death and the echoing of tank fire, the Winter Soldier is there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for those curious, лапушка is a russian term of endearment. translated literally it means little paw, but it's like saying dear/sweetheart in english. it's a more sugary version of лапа and is commonly used for children and women and less often for men (hence the joke) but it can definitely be used for men as a legitimate term of endearment.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the field, it is a non-stop calculation of mathematics and refinements for temperature, humidity, altitude, enemy routes, and ballistic trajectories. In the field, he spends days crawling through dirt and tall grasses or slinking across the tops of buildings, getting bit by every bug imaginable and scratched by every thicket and bush. In the field, he looks through the scope of his sniper rifle for hours waiting for his target. In the field, the only person he can trust is himself. In the field, he sleeps in ten minute bursts, finger never leaving the trigger, because to sleep any longer means the possibility between life and death. In the field, the only person he can trust is himself.
> 
> This is what he knows.  
> She is sleeping next to him.  
> He feels liquid prick at his eyes, and he blinks rapidly.

_[I see our enemies_  
_I see them on their knees_  
_Crawling across the floor_  
_You kill them all_

 _The things I thought I'd want_  
_They vanish one by one_  
_Invisible, Invisible, Invisible]_

* * *

In the old days, they tell us to fear the West. They tell us the West will come with artillery, with tanks, with missiles and they tell us the West will slowly but surely destroy everything the Republic has built. The West is based on exploitation, and they will exploit until they can exploit no more.

You are performing your revolutionary duty, Natalia, her handler tells her. For the sake of this goal anything and everything is permissible. For the sake of the Union, you may lie, you may steal, you may destroy, you may do all of this so that we may have peace.

Perhaps she was always headed for this trajectory. Always headed down this path the day Ivan took her from a burning home as a child and raised her among soldiers. Even then, she never considered herself a patriot. Not exactly. She considered herself a survivor. She fought because if she did not fight, she would die. She served the Motherland because if she did not, she would die.

When Ivan was dying, Department X offered a solution. She saved the life of the closest thing she ever had to a parent. She swore loyalty to the regime and entered into the Red Room. In the beginning, she was angry. Bitter. She told herself there was no real choice in the matter.

It was a lie. The only thing she ever had was her choice.

When the choice is survival or nothing, you always choose survival.

Natalia raises her foot to the barre, extends her calf, carefully measuring her posture in the reflection of the mirror. She stretches out her muscles, lifts her other leg, waiting for the class to start.

A woman in a black leotard with chestnut hair pulled tight in a bun, and pale pink lips rests her hand on the barre beside her. Yekaterina Fekete.

Natalia began scheduling classes with Yekaterina two months ago all in an attempt to build a repertoire. Contrary to popular belief, people can be quantified. People can be reduced to numbers and hard information.

Natalia learned within three weeks that Yekaterina was born in the provinces in Hungary to a Russian mother and a Hungarian father. Her mother is a teacher, her father is an accountant. Yekaterina’s talent was of great interest to the Soviet Union, and her family jumped at the opportunity for her to study with the Bolshoi Company. Yekaterina enjoys opera, has a terrible sweet tooth, and is almost tragically in love with knitting – though she is terrible at it. Yekaterina has also recently acquired a taste for Dostoyevsky.

It’s easy to make people trust you. It’s a simple matter of just knowing _how_ to build that trust.

“I heard the news this morning! You’ve been accepted into the corps de ballet already, Katya,” Natalia keeps her foot on the barre as she pins her red hair up. “Congratulations!”

Yekaterina’s mentors call her a rising star, many predict she will leave the corps de ballet behind within a year or two and become a leading soloist.

"Thank you, Natashka," she smiles, shyly. "You have a year of studying left, don’t you? I hope to see you in rehearsals with me soon."

Natalia laughs, a pleasant, light-hearted sound that suits this version of herself quite well. "You think they will accept me?"

"Don’t be silly, of course they will! You’re just as good as I am.”

Katya gives her an encouraging smile – she is kind in many ways as Natalia has come to learn. Natalia lowers her foot when the instructor enters. Gabovich is a demanding man. He never praises his students, simply expects perfection. It reminds her of someone.

Natalia leans over to Katya, nudges her lightly on the shoulder.

"Do you want to grab dinner after this? I’ve been meaning to loan you _the House of the Dead_ , the Dostoyevsky book you asked about."

Katya’s mouth widens into another smile, and she nods vigorously.

Gabovich snaps his fingers three times, quieting the room. He points at the barre, and begins counting. Natalia lowers herself into a plié, constantly aware of her posture, as Gabovich runs them through the barre combinations.

By 1800 hours the sun is already setting low over Moscow, and Natalia exchanges her pink satin ballet shoes for boots, changes into a long sleeve shirt and pulls on her pants and a waist-length, plush, grey coat.

She pauses for a minute as she gazes at her reflection. Part of her enjoys this – the training, the routine, the friends she’s made – even Katya. It’s different from the Red Room. In the Red Room, she didn’t make friends. In the Red Room, there were no names, the girls did not speak of their past, and the most that passed for polite conversation were the rare times they assisted each other in group training exercises. Natalia remembers number Twenty was all bluster in front of the others, afraid to show any sign of weakness, but one day she quietly asked Natalia to show her how to handle disarming the wiring on a booby trap. After that day, Twenty had her back in every single field training exercise. She wonders, sometimes, what happened to the other girls, can only assume they were each sent to different areas and assigned different departments just as she was.

Natalia knows her cover isn’t real, but some part of her does believe it. Natalia is twenty-three, but looks seventeen. There are days she even believes she is truly seventeen. Her handler tells her not to worry when she professes fear over forgetting her place as a Black Widow, he says it’s simply easier to keep covers straight this way. She doesn’t remember the procedure, not exactly, only knows that when it was finished she was a dancer.

She straightens when she hears Katya call her name from behind the closed door. Natalia grabs her bag, and the wood floor creaks under her weight as she shuffles over it. She twists the doorknob, and greets Katya with a mischievous smile.

She probes Katya sometimes, but never too much, only a little. Hints dropped here and there, testing her loyalty, questioning her motives in idle chatter. The mission is simple, it's distressingly simple, yet Natalia hesitates – doesn't trust her gut, doesn't trust herself like she knows she should. She tells her superiors Katya is a simple student, loyal to the Republic and loyal to the advancement of Soviet culture. All Katya wants is to dance, all Katya wants is to make her parents proud.

"Natashka, I’ve seen that look before," Katya begins, reluctance clear in her tone. "I also remember the last time I saw that look I woke up with a pounding headache and I seemed to have misplaced my car.”

"Look?" Natalia feigns incredulousness. "What look?! You must be mistaken.”

"I thought we were going to dinner," Katya crosses her arms.

Natalia teases Katya’s arms out from over her chest, and loops one of her own through them.

"We can’t have that, not for someone who’s officially been announced a Bolshoi ballerina," she giggles when she hears Katya’s begrudging groan beside her.

Natalia pushes open the entrance to the Academy, dragging Yekaterina along as she skips down the plaza. Banners with hammer and sickle iconography hang from nearby buildings, looming incongruously over the Red Square, but she pays them no mind.

The hourly bell tolls from the Kremlin clock tower, and ravens perched atop Saint Basil’s Cathedral take off in a flurry of wings. Natalia watches as they fly off into the rosy horizon and almost smiles.

It’s a nice feeling. It feels like freedom.

* * *

Three days later she finds a document, encrypted, in Yekaterina’s apartment. She copies it by hand while Yekaterina is in the shower, and brings it back to her own apartment. She doesn’t tell her handler. Not until she’s sure.

She is.

It details Yekaterina’s plans for a meeting with a man named Nikolai Filin, a smuggler based out of Leningrad, a smuggler who helps people seeking to escape the confines of the Kremlin.

Natalia’s chest suddenly aches, and the teacup in her hand clatters to the floor – breaking into pieces. She sets the document down.

My name is Natalia Romanova.  
My name is Natalia.  
I am one of twenty-eight ballerinas with –  
I am number Five.  
I am a Black - I am a ballerina - I am one of twenty-eight.

She goes to the kitchen, opens the cabinet under her sink, and pulls a Makarov taped to the top paneling out. She slides the clip out, checks the ammo, and slams it back in.

* * *

 "I trust you understand how sensitive this situation is, Soldier.”

The Winter Soldier sits across from Major Mikhail Moiseyev, and another man he has never met, but who introduced himself as Sergei Gudanov and shook his hand when the Winter Soldier stepped into the room with scuffed and muddy combat boots.

Moiseyev’s office is small and relatively sparse save for the bookshelf on the left wall and the dark oak desk, shined to a perfect polish, set in the center. The oaken desk takes up over half the space in the room. It is hardly utilitarian; in fact it’s far too ostentatious which sets it apart from regular staples of Soviet manufacturing.

The Winter Soldier nods, stays silent.

Moiseyev is in charge of the 13th Department, Executive Action. The 13th Department handles wet work – murders, sabotage, kidnapping, and anything that involves the shedding of blood. It is why the Winter Soldier often finds himself in the presence of the Major, the closest thing he has to a handler aside from General Karpov.

Two laboratories are associated with the Executive Action Department. One produces special weapons and explosives; the other develops poisons and drugs. Department X is the third, off the books installation. No agents are permitted access or even knowledge of its location. Of course, this doesn’t stop the rumors that inevitably fly between recruits and other KGB agents. The Winter Soldier is aware of each department because he is a product of them. General Karpov oversees Department X and the Red Room training facility in conjunction with the 13th Department.

“The Black Widow is a valuable asset to the party, but she’s been off grid since 0800 yesterday. She hasn’t followed procedure, and Sergei hasn’t heard from her,” Moiseyev speaks through pinched lips, his mouth barely moving. “I know you trained her in the Red Room.”

Gudanov comes to lean at the front of Moiseyev’s desk and looks down a pointed noise at a place just next to the Winter Soldier. His beady eyes, set behind glasses, jump to and fro but never land square on the Winter Soldier even once.

Gudanov works in the 12th Department, Disinformation. The 12th Department is responsible for shaping perceptions of hostile groups to the Soviet Union via propaganda and for a variety of clandestine initiatives to influence foreign governments. The 13th and 12th departments frequently work together to remove threats to Soviet interests. Sometimes this entails arranging for the dismissal of certain people from public office in underhanded ways, or eliminating them permanently. The Winter Soldier assumes Natalia has been assigned to the Disinformation Department if he is her handler.

He remembers last year, remembers the last time he saw her in a crimson colored corridor, remembers every detail of her down to the shape of her eyes, the taste of her lips, the way her face fell when he told her he was going to Hungary. A day has not gone by that he has not thought of her.

“You have permission to use whatever method and degree of force you deem necessary, just understand we want her back,” Gudanov pauses, chews at the corner of his cheek for a moment as he mulls over his next words. “However, if she is exhibiting signs of disloyalty, then termination is authorized.”

The Winter Soldier’s knee bounces slightly, his foot tapping against the floor. He blinks twice, eyelashes fluttering as he looks down.

The Winter Soldier acts because the mission dictates it. The Winter Soldier moves because the mission dictates it. The Winter Soldier has protocol, the Winter Soldier has orders. The Winter Soldier does not –

He does – not –

He has protocol.

He has orders.

He does – does not –

“Termination?” The Winter Soldier’s voice is small, uttering the question barely above a whisper.

There is silence for several moments, and Gudanov nervously taps his fingers on the hardwood desk, glancing back at Moiseyev. Moiseyev clasps his hands together over the dark wood and juts his round chin out. His eyes squint as he levels the Winter Soldier with a curious stare. Moiseyev is one of the few men, aside from General Karpov, who ever looks him directly in the eyes.

“Yes. Termination. If it is necessary. Do you have a problem with these orders, Soldier?” Moiseyev’s lips pinch together even harder.

“No,” the Winter Soldier says, reflexively.

Gudanov swings his eyes back and forth between them both then places a hand up in a small act of protest. “But we’re hoping it won’t come to that. Just report back to us immediately with the Black Widow. She is extremely valuable and we would not waste your time with a mission like this if she was not.”

“It will be done,” the Winter Soldier stands.

Gudanov holds out his hand, and the Winter Soldier shakes it.

“When you find Black Widow, bring her in right away,” Moiseyev waves the Winter Soldier away like he is little less than a gnat. “I don’t care what it takes. Just get it done.”

When he exits the room, Moiseyev leans back in his chair, breathing through his nose. He glances at Gudanov. “Get me comrade Karpov on the phone.”

* * *

Her hands are bleeding. They are bleeding and the red liquid is dripping and pooling at her feet, and she doesn’t even know if the blood is hers. They are starting to take things from her. Putting things in. Taking things away. Department X has strapped her down and made her doubt herself. She will never forgive them for this.

I am one of twenty-eight.  
I am number Five.

_No. No. This isn’t right._

There’s a voice in her ear, disembodied, like she’s hearing it from underwater. There’s a fog over her eyes, and –

She looks at her hands again, looks down, looks –

Her black boots are stained with blood.

_No. No. This isn’t right._

She is screaming, and the voice is yelling in her ear.

My name is Natalia.  
I am one of twenty-eight Black Widows with –  
My name is Natalia R –  
I am a ballerina.

Strong hands grip her bloodied ones, and there is a flash of silver, a glint of what looks like steel. She sees his eyes, they’re pale blue. Pretty. They remind her of her friend Katya’s eyes.

She looks down and –

Yekaterina is dead. Yekaterina is dead and her eyes are the eyes of a corpse, pupils hollow and void of any life.

She is in the forest. It is snowing. Chill wind blows against the sweat on her face and moisture seeps into her boots. The acrid scent of rotting wood creeps around her and she can hear creatures rustling in the underbrush.

_No. No. This isn’t right._

The man with pale blue eyes. His are still alive. His eyes are worried. Her world suddenly begins to spin – surroundings blur together in murky haze and she's taken off balance, her feet no longer touching the ground. She finds her equilibrium again when he slings her over his shoulder.

Natalia's head bobs and sways with each movement as the man carries her away. Her eyes focus in and out on her outstretched palm, limp against his back.

“You found me,” she says, the words instinctively slipping out in English, but she doesn’t know what she means by it.

A small stream of blood slides over the surface of her hand, through a single line on her palm, and congeals at her fingertip.

drip -

\- drip -

drip -

Natalia watches, mesmerized, as the blood spills into the snow behind them, a tiny spattering on the ice. She floats in and out of consciousness, eyes drifting open and closed... The last thing she sees is the imprint of his heavy boots in the snow, and a single drop of red tainting an ocean of white in the distance.

When she awakens, she’s in the back of a car; the tops of brown trees, their trunks covered in moss and snow, roll by in the window. Her vision blurs, scarlet covering her eyelids and she chokes on her own tongue. She sees Katya’s body behind her eyes. There is red, red, red, everywhere red.

_Is it even possible to wash away so much red?_

The car comes to a stop, pulling to the side of the road, and the door behind her opens. She whips her head around, her hand instinctively reaching for the throat of the man behind her. He tenses, but only for a minute.

"Natalia," he chokes out. “Do you know who you are?”

“Yes,” but then she grasps her head, crying out in pain. “No. I-I’m one of twenty-eight young ballerinas with the Bolshoi.”

He furrows his brow at her, and the worry she remembers from before clouds his eyes again.

“No, that’s…my cover story. I –” she blinks rapidly, eyes rolling back into her head.

“Natalia, you are a Black Widow agent,” his voice is calm and reassuring.

He slips into the seat beside her, shutting the door behind him. Her eyes search frantically, seeking signs of anything that can help her make sense of what’s happening. She does not recognize this car nor does she recognize this man. She barely recognizes herself in the reflection of the rear-view mirror.

“I spent my entire childhood training to be a ballerina,” she starts babbling, barely registering the flurry of words spitting from her mouth, “I just wanted to make my parents proud! It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Natalia looks down at her hands, turns each of them over, carefully examining, and sees there is blood beneath her fingernails. “What did I do?”

"The memories they gave you, I think they broke down. You’ve been undercover too long."

“But I –”

It comes back to her all at once. She sees herself sitting in a chair, watching countless videos of ballerinas dancing, learning the technique perfectly as it’s implanted in her mind. Her body is a tool, this tool is adaptable. The next day she performs seven double and one triple fouettés en tournant flawlessly. Every ebb and flow of her limbs, every turn of her head and every step is danced with the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel sharpened to a point. There are nods of approval from a man in a white lab coat and her handlers. She is enrolled in the Academy a week later, given her cover as a seventeen year old ballerina in training.

She doesn’t even realize she’s shaking and sobbing in revulsion and nausea until she feels his arms wrap around her. He’s an anchor, a weight holding her trembling form against him, close and tight, as if he can fight away her pain with his body alone.

"I’m sorry," she says, quickly, composing herself as best as she can. "I – I remember now. Where are we?"

"I’m taking you back to Lubyanka.”

Her heart is suddenly in her throat, her mind madly trying to recreate the scene in her head.

"Did I complete the mission?!" She barely realizes she is shouting. "Did I complete the mission?!"

Black Widows do not fail. Natalia Romanova does not fail. It is not allowed.

The metal fingers are cool against her cheek, rubbing a circle against her flesh, soothing the flushed skin there.

"You did," he presses cold lips to her forehead. "It’s okay."

She breathes and her shoulders sag as she leans into his chest. His chin comes to rest atop her head, and her fingers claw into the fabric of his thick, navy blue trench coat. He inhales, deeply, his nose trailing along the top of her red hair, tousling the locks while his flesh hand massages the back of her neck, nails lightly scratching at her scalp. He feels like something she can’t quite put a word to – she imagines herself as a rope, a rope being cast out in the blackness of night, and he is the harbor she ties to.

She remembers now, now that her head is clearer, and –

_No. No. This isn’t right._

She shoves a hand against him, her nostrils flaring as palpable fear compresses and twists at her insides.

"Why are you here," she demands. "Why did they send you?"

It isn’t right. It’s not protocol. The Winter Soldier was never assigned this case. When his face falls, Natalia shrinks away from him instantly, her back hitting the opposite door with an audible thud.

"Natalia…." He reaches for her, but she smacks his hand away.

"What do they want you to do to me?"

There is always a price to failure.

"They sent me to retrieve you, and salvage the mission if necessary. That’s…” he pauses, tone pleading – begging her to trust him. “That’s all. You didn’t follow procedure. Your handler said he was to receive a dead drop from you, an update on your mission, but it never came. What happened?”

“The mission….the mission…” she repeats over and over, scrambling through her brain to find the pieces she’s looking for.

* * *

_"Watch her closely, Widow. The Hungarian uprising may have been quelled, but," Gudanov pauses, his lip quivering in disgust. "There are things we will need to keep in check. Harmful attitudes. Hostile acts against our efforts for peace."_

_"Yes, sir," Natalia says._

_"You have been with the Bolshoi Academy several months now. There is a ballerina there by the name of Yekaterina Fekete. There have been.....rumors."_

_Natalia quirks an eyebrow. "What kind of rumors?”_

_"She may be trying to defect," Gudanov slides a file from his desk and places it in front of her. "She was close friends with a man named Alexander Vasiliev, a scientist, who slipped through our fingers last month. He knew too much. This cannot happen again."_

_Natalia takes the file and begins flipping through it as Gudanov continues speaking._

_“Our most pressing concern is the smuggler. There have been a string of defections in the past several months that could be related, and Yekaterina’s connection to Alexander is our most promising lead. If she is planning to defect, it is likely she will use the same person. We need to flush this out at the source. Pull out the root of this corruption. Find this smuggler, and put an end to him.”_

_“Anything else I need to know?” Natalia flips to the final page, her eyes scanning over the last document – general information about Yekaterina’s childhood._

_“Yekaterina has already been accepted into the Bolshoi’s troupe, so you understand our need for discretion. We have been told she would be a valuable asset to the Company. She is one of the brightest students in the Academy.”_

_“She’s already been accepted?” Natalia’s eyes peek up from the file. “I haven’t heard this yet.”_

_“The Bolshoi is waiting to announce. So, I ask that you trust, but verify she is not planning on defection. You have a history of dealing with these problems quickly and carefully, and it has not gone unnoticed.”_

_"It will be done, comrade Gudanov,” Natalia closes the file._

_“Good,” Gudanov rises from his seat, and shakes Natalia’s hand firmly over his desk. “You may see yourself out, Black Widow.”_

* * *

_Natalia’s face turns ashen, and her breathing comes in ragged gasps. She inhales bitter air as snow drifts into the collar of her jacket. With shaking, unsteady hands she rolls Katya’s body over, and sees the blood staining her chest._

_Natalia is nothing if not efficient, her superiors will say of her later._

_In one of her earliest missions, she was sent to retrieve information from a foreign security official in Istanbul._ _If Natalia tilts her head just right and laughs precisely on cue, they see a young and naïve girl. Denial. Deception. People see what they want to see._ _Few moves are as game changing as turning one country's loyal asset into your very own trusted asset – even better when they do not know they are being used. No amount of security or encryption or locked vaults can keep sensitive information from spilling out of an imprudent enemy's mouth. It's alarmingly easy to make enemies appear unreliable when they do half the work for you. Then, it's no longer a question of how long it will take for their own government to clean up the mess – only when._

_She will always get the job done, her superiors will say._

_But the memories they implant in her before missions, the conditioning, her cover as a ballerina, it all starts to blend. It changes her._

_"Katya?! Katya?!"_

_Natalia’s hands move over Katya’s breastbone, she presses her lips to hers, two full breaths –_

_One. Push._

_Two. Push._

_Three. Pu –_

_There’s a sound, like a branch being stepped on, and Katya’s ribs crack beneath Natalia’s fingers._

_"Oh god. Oh god,” she chokes out. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry."_

_Natalia grips Katya’s soft fur coat between her fingers, and holds her. The snow continues to pour around them, each tiny flake like salt being rubbed into an open wound._ _Natalia cries until she is hollow._ _It isn’t long until Katya’s lips turn blue._

_People cannot be quantified. People cannot be reduced to numbers and hard information._

_Katya's laugh cannot be quantified. Katya's dreams cannot be reduced to numbers. Katya's life cannot be reduced to hard information._

_As Natalia sits with Katya, she becomes startlingly aware of the cold._

_She drove her friend to the woods and put a bullet in her back._

* * *

The memory tastes like still burning ashes being shoved down her throat, hot and dusty against her tongue, and Natalia’s fingers claw at the door handle. She opens it, stumbles out, and falls to her knees in gravel and wet snow. She closes her eyes and inhales, deep breaths in and out, in and out, as she readjusts – lets each and every little piece of memory fall into place in her mind. She remembers calling Katya a traitor just before the bullet left her Makarov.

When she opens her eyes she is Natalia Romanova, a Black Widow agent. Black Widow agents do not fail. She stands with little effort, and comes face to face with the Winter Soldier again. She composes herself and fixes him with a stern expression.

“I need to go to Leningradsky station,” she says.

“I’ve been ordered to take you in,” he replies.

She ignores him, and makes her way around the vehicle until she is at the driver’s door. He follows her every step of the way.

“I’ve been ordered to take you in,” his voice repeats behind her.

"Go back to your masters if you must, I have a mission to complete,” her hand reaches for the door handle.

"Natalia," he grips her by the arm – too rough – his metal hand forms a vice around her flesh.

She reacts instantly, turns and punches him dead in the throat. His grip loosens. Her fingers slide out his Ka-Bar from its holster on his thigh, and she drops low, sweeps her leg, and he’s on his back in a flat second with her straddling him, knife at his jugular.

“What’s this? Still carrying around an American knife?” Natalia’s resounding laughter is sharp and cutting. “Have you forgotten you belong to Mother Russia?”

"You think I can’t disarm you?" he asks, eyes trained on her green ones. His body is relaxed beneath her, clearly unfazed, but she persists.

"In this position?" she digs the blade closer, and he winces. "I think I’d like to see you try."

Their eyes connect, and they keep an even, steady gaze on each other, neither one of them blinking. Natalia counts the seconds off in her head as they tick by.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

His blue eyes break first; roving down to her mouth, then back up. Her nails dig into the fabric of his sleeve, and she sees his pupils dilate marginally. His lips part just barely, his tongue darting out to wet them, and she is suddenly reminded of how soft they are. She feels his whole body tense beneath her.

“Why do you need to go to Leningradsky station?” he asks, interrupting the silence.

“The mission isn’t over. Katy – Yekaterina was planning on meeting with a man named Nikolai. He smuggles people out, and he will be gone by tomorrow morning. If we catch a train now, we can make it to Leningrad in eight hours."

“We?” he quirks an eyebrow at her.

“You said you were here to salvage the mission, didn’t you?”

“I did.”

“Then, лапушка,” she flashes him a wicked grin. “Salvage my mission.”

She removes the blade from his throat, and drags it lightly down the outside of his thigh – painstakingly slow – never taking her eyes off his face. She feels his muscles tense again, and his hips jerk ever so slightly beneath her when she sheathes the Ka-Bar back in its holster. Her fingers trail back up his black pants, and she tilts her head forward, hips wriggling. She smirks when she hears him trying to suppress a groan.

She jumps up, and runs to the passenger side door. “Time to move!”

She’s not sure, but she swears she hears him lapse back into Russian, cursing under his breath. 

The Red Arrow train from Leningradsky railway station takes eight hours to arrive at Moskovsky railway station.

It is 1900 hours when they arrive. The air is cold, dank, and the city is mired in the gloom of winter.

Leningrad. It has been called many different names. In the beginning, Saint Petersburg. Then Petrograd. And then, for the third time in history, the city with an ever-changing, ever adapting history and name was painted red. Red in revolution. Red in October.

The obvious method to combat an enemy is to confuse him. A careful mixture of truths, half-truths, and lies is far more effective than any straightforward untruth. It's why propaganda is so useful. The Cold War is waged with the purpose of conquering minds.

Words have power. Words have more power than any knife or bullet ever can. So do names.

Any good operative knows this. Natalia excels in this. It’s easy to believe in lies. It’s easier to believe in lies than it is to believe in the truth for most people. Natalia often wonders if she should count herself among these people.

For a spy, loyalty is a strange and elusive thing. When your job is to deceive and to live among enemies, trust is a hard commodity to come by. It’s easy to believe you’re in control of your fate and it’s easy to believe all the dark deeds you perform are in service of a higher purpose. Sometimes lies are easier to swallow, sometimes lies are the only thing that let you sleep at night.

They start at Nikolai’s hotel. When Natalia decrypted the document’s cipher, it listed a place for their meeting not far from Saint Isaac’s Square.

Hotel Astoria. It is, perhaps, not the most dramatic six storey building on first glance, but it is possibly the most emblematic of Russia's turbulent history. If only walls could speak...

In July of 1917, then Petrograd, the pavement of Saint Isaac's Square sang with the marching of the Bolsheviks in the early days of the February Revolution. And then it sang no more. Military authorities loyal to the Tsar sent troops against the demonstration, and the pavement outside the Astoria was stained in blood.

In 1919, two years after the capture of the Winter Palace and the overthrowing of the Tsarist autocracy, Lenin appeared from Astoria's royal suite balcony to address those in the square below.

Today, the décor is light and airy, oak parquet floors click beneath Natalia’s boots, and it barely gives the impression it has weathered through revolutions and sieges.

“Let me handle the talking,” Natalia says to the Winter Soldier before approaching the front desk.

It takes her all of five minutes to extract the room number, even a spare key. Nikolai is staying in a deluxe suite, but is not currently in. According to the tremendously helpful young man at the front desk, he had tickets to the ballet at the Kirov Theatre.

Like the city of Leningrad itself, the Kirov Theatre has gone through several name changes in reflection of the political climate. Originally the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, named for a Tsar’s wife, it was changed in 1924 to the Leningrad Theatre. In 1934 a Communist Party leader, Sergey Kirov, was shot and killed in what many now call the Leningrad Affair and it was renamed once more to commemorate him.

The showing of Prokofiev’s eighth and final ballet, _The Tale of the Stone Flower,_ started at 1800. Nikolai will be out in less than an hour.

The story is relatively simple, based on an old Russian folk tale. Danila, a stone carver, falls in love with a woman named Katerina, but Danila's strive for the unattainable ideal of beauty and perfection in his art sets him down a path of conflict. There are villains, there are heroes, and in the end Katerina and Danila live happily ever after – as many do in fairy tales. If only real life was so straightforward.

Natalia and the Winter Soldier wait across from the Kirov on a long, dark sidewalk near a lone phone booth with a clear line of sight of the theatre’s exits and entrances. The young man at the front office was also kind enough to give her a rather helpful description of Nikolai. Black hair, 6 foot, and an unmistakable mole just above his right eye.

Natalia yearns to be on stage, and finds her feet instinctively moving to fifth position, to tendu, then fourth position, and she begins to turn in a pirouette. It isn’t perfect. She is wearing boots, after all. But she dances, then, on a dirty sidewalk, where her only audience is a ghost and a whisper.

The Winter Soldier leans, lazily, against the criss-cross metal bars on the outside of the phone booth, adjusts the collar on his waist-length trench coat, and folds his arms over his chest. His eyes follow her every turn, every whip of her head, every slide of her leg.

She dances for herself, for him, it doesn't matter. She dances, and she is free. She is Natalia Romanova, future ballerina of the Bolshoi. She is Natalia Romanova, Black Widow agent.

She has been everyone and no one. She has lived countless lives, and taken countless more.

"You know, I could just hot wire a car and grab him when he exits the Kirov,” the Winter Soldier’s voice interrupts her reverie, “Gag him and throw him in the trunk. Simple."

Natalia shifts her weight, lets her spin take her drifting toward his position at the phone booth. His hands reach around her waist, steadying her.

"How romantic, лапушка,” she wraps her arms around his neck, fingers playing with locks of his hair.

A small chuckle elicits from his throat, and his fingers crawl beneath the fabric of her coat, cold thumbs massaging at her hipbones.

"I try," he says, leaning his forehead against hers. "Seriously, though. We could take him back, if you want, an offering to our superiors. They aren’t going to be happy about this little side trip.”

She rubs her nose against his nose, back and forth. A crooked grin breaks out on his face, and his warm breath fans at her flushed cheeks.

“Where have you been?” she asks, lips close enough to his they brush against his mouth when she speaks.

“Around,” he says, voice husky, and it sends a tingle shooting down Natalia’s spine.

“In February, in Mexico City, a United States colonel was killed…” she breathes softly against his lips. “Was it you?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve been taking news clippings,” he teases, giving her a smug half-smile. “Let me guess. There’s a cork board in your apartment covered with pins of all mysterious killings trying to keep track of me.”

She punches him on the shoulder.

“Ow.”

She presses a kiss next to his chin, lips brushing against his prickly facial hair, and she feels his jaw clench under her mouth. She pulls back and runs two fingers through his hair, pushing it behind his ear.

"Did you miss me?" she whispers the question directly into his ear, and feels him stiffen against her.

When he doesn’t immediately answer, she takes his earlobe into her mouth and drags her teeth down the supple skin. His pulse spikes and she hears his breath hitch in his throat.

He digs his fingers into her waist harder, splaying his hands across her skin as he pulls her closer. “Every. Day.”

She murmurs a quiet noise of approval, tongue gently toying with the soft skin. They stay close together, her arms still wrapped around his neck and his hands at her waist – anyone who passes by them will think they are a typical couple.

After a few minutes, she angles her head to look at the mint green face of the Kirov. “There’s no point changing the plan now, the hotel will work better. I want to speak to this man.”

When the show is over, they zero in on a person perfectly matching Nikolai’s description as the crowd pours from the theatre. They tail him back to the Astoria.

* * *

She meets the Winter Soldier’s eyes a moment, and he gives her a curt nod. Guns would be too loud. She inserts the key, turns the lock quickly, and he is through the door in an instant. She shuts the door behind them, locks it, and –

“Excuse me,” a high pitched voice echoes from the middle of the room. “I asked not to be disturb –”

“Shut up.”

She hears the crack of metal against flesh. She strolls down the short hallway, and sees Nikolai fall to his knees in front of the Winter Soldier. In the right corner of the room, a window overlooks the gleaming gold-plated colossal dome of Saint Isaac's Cathedral, the façade of the structure decorated with sculptures and massive granite columns. The Winter Soldier pulls the linen curtains to a close, and Nikolai watches in stunned silence as the Winter Soldier removes his gloves, and places them on a table beside the window. His eyes widen when he sees the metal hand, and he starts ranting.

“I – Oh, no, no, no – please, no. I’m just a businessman, I’ll give you whatever you want – what do you want? Do you want money? I have money – please – don’t –“

The Winter Soldier backhands Nikolai. “Shut up.”

Natalia removes her coat, sets it on the back of a chair, and rolls up her sleeves. She bends down, gets eye level with Nikolai.

“Over here,” she snaps her fingers in his face. “Yekaterina Fekete, do you know her?”

Nikolai breathes heavily for several seconds, then finally tears his eyes away from the Winter Soldier and says, “Yes. Yes, is that what this is about? You want her?”

Natalia raises an eyebrow. “What? What are you talking about? You’re a smuggler, you help people defect.”

“Yes, but for the right price I can give you whatever you want. If you want Yekaterina I can make it happen, please – just – let me live!”

Natalia straightens her back, glances at the Winter Soldier, then back to Nikolai.

“You’re just doing this for _money_?” her voice trembles slightly. “You don’t even believe? You helped a scientist defect three months ago.”

Nikolai suddenly starts laughing, a pitiful, pathetic sound, his eyes wide and his nose dripping snot. “Of course I believe, I believe in whatever you want me to believe in for rubles.”

Fear and greed make a formidable combination, and people like Nikolai use it against those they know are easy targets. Nausea stirs in the pit of Natalia's stomach.

“Who are you? Secret police? Eh? Did she rat me out, then?”

Natalia’s hand starts shaking violently. "You did this, you put these ideas into her head, I – this is your fault!"

"My fault? I was her goddamn savior! You know, she has a family, back in Hungary. They paid the price for her freedom. Gave up their home to give me the money,” he laughs again. “Not that they had much of a home left after that uprising.”

The Winter Soldier’s entire body goes taut beside her, and she sees him swallow hard from the corner of her vision.

"You're disgusting, preying on people like this,” she says.

"Are you any better? Tell me, where is Yekaterina now? Did you even bother to bury the body?"

She grabs him by the collar and her fist crashes noisily against his nose. He laughs. She strikes him again.

Again.

Again.

Again.

She punches him until his face is cracked and bleeding, until his lips are bruised and broken. She punches him like he’s a lifeline – an answer to a question she doesn’t even know, she punches him until she can make her world make sense again.

It doesn’t make her feel better.

Natalia falls back, knuckles covered in Nikolai’s already drying blood. She looks at the Winter Soldier, their eyes meeting briefly in an unspoken communication.

"Get up," The Winter Soldier grabs Nikolai by a tuft of black hair, hauls him to stand, and drags him to the wall. He kicks the back of the man's leg, forcing his body to the carpet. Nikolai's forehead slams against the wall.

The Winter Soldier steps back, and Natalia moves in. She wordlessly holds out her right hand.

The Winter Soldier reaches down, removes the NR-40 concealed in his boot, and places the hilt of it in her palm. Her fingers curl around the grip, tight, and she presses the edge to Nikolai's throat. She recognizes this knife. It’s the same knife that drew blood from her arm last year.

She can hear Nikolai’s teeth chattering in fear, words of protest and utterances of begging still spilling from his lips. In one clean motion, the blade draws across his throat and fresh blood splatters against the wall. Blood bubbles up from his mouth and Nikolai chokes, clawing with two hands at his sliced neck. His body slumps and he slides into a corner next to the mahogany nightstand, his blood smearing across the manila colored wall.

"He's right," she grips the knife tighter in her hand, examines the stain of blood on it. "If there were other choices, people wouldn't have to resort to trash like him."

Natalia spits on his corpse.

"If there were choices....if...." she trails off, sighing deep. “If _we_ had choices."

* * *

He sees her hands trembling in rage, adrenaline still thrumming through her body as something that sounds akin to a sob rips its way from her chest. She drops the knife, and it clatters softly against the carpet. She immediately covers her mouth with her hands, her shoulders hunching over.

"Natalia..." he moves closer, placing a tentative hand on her arm.

She grabs him by the wrist and his back slams into the wall next to Nikolai’s bleeding form. She grasps his face with both hands, nails digging into the soft skin just under his ear, and kisses him, hard and greedy.

He parts his lips, and her tongue slides between his.

Nimble fingers start yanking and pulling at buttons, slipping him out of his thick navy colored coat as fast as humanly possible. She pulls away from his lips only long enough to jerk his black turtleneck up and over his stomach. He pulls it off the rest of the way and it falls silently to the floor. Her hands creep up his chilled flesh, sliding over muscle and along his shoulder blades. She bends her head, kisses at his chest painstakingly slow, once, twice, three times…trailing all the way up to his neck until he is flushed red.

His heart is beating in his ears, pounding so loudly his vision darkens. He tries to breathe, but his exhales come out harsh and shallow. His fingertips are tingling and a numbness is running its way up his right arm.

It’s too much all at once. Her tongue darts in and out of his mouth, she bites and sucks at his bottom lip, and his hands are clutching her hipbones tight enough to bruise.

A low, throaty groan rolls from his chest and ripples through his body. He spins her around, shoving her against the wall, and kisses her back with his whole mouth, hungry, and desperate, holding onto the barest wisps of self-control.

Within seconds, he’s pulling away, panting and shuddering. She feathers kisses along his jaw, and the feeling of her mouth lingers long after she’s moved on, his entire body vibrating with anticipation.

When she closes her teeth around the racing pulse in his neck, his muscles tighten, straining so hard over his skin he feels as if his bones are going to tear straight through and – and – he blinks rapidly, tries to breathe – his vision darkens again – inhales –

His arm spasms, and wallpaper suddenly crushes beneath his fist. His hand goes straight through, tearing a gaping hole in the plaster.

“Fuck, Nat,” he groans, glancing at the wall. “Sorry. I – I…”

“What do you want?” she runs a finger along the light scruff at his chin. Her eyes are fierce, intense. “Not what they want. What do _you_ want?”

His tongue anxiously licks at his lips, and he braces the wall with both hands beside her face.

“You. I want you,” he breathes.

“Rules were meant to be broken, лапушка.”

In a city that’s seen more blood than most; they made a revolution of their own. A choice. She kisses him again, and heat prickles across his skin, penetrating through his entire body. He _wants_ it to burn; he wants to feel all of it.

She shoves him away from her, and he hits the nightstand beside the bed with the back of his knees. But she’s relentless, and advances on him quickly. His fingers snake up her shirt and their hands claw across each other's skin in every direction, recklessly lost in the feel of each other, desperate to touch each and every single place they can reach.

He twists away from her, and knocks the lamp off the nightstand. It crushes against the wall, shattering into tiny pieces, the debris falling in fragments over Nikolai’s body. He snatches Natalia by the arm, lifts her, and slams her against the small stand. He shoves a leg between hers and she widens them further, fingers tracing at the scar just below his rib. She moans loudly, and throws her head back, exposing her throat for him. His fingers slip through the red strands of her hair as he drags his teeth along the crook of her neck. He stops briefly when her pulse spikes and beats at a furious pace and listens, drinks the sound in, committing the pattern of it to memory.

A helpless noise stirs from the back of his throat and his metal fingers twitch against the hem of her shirt, tearing it slightly. She stops. She reaches down, and tugs the long-sleeve over her head, discarding it on the floor. He gazes at her in utter reverence, eyes wide, lips parted in awe, when she unclasps her bra and lets it fall to the wayside. He breathes out, three heavy, shaking breaths.

“The moment I saw you,” he grips at her thighs, and kisses a searing line between her breasts.

He doesn’t finish the sentence, can’t – can’t think –

She pushes him back onto the hand-embroidered bed sheets, comes to rest above him, toned thighs wrapping around the outside of his legs. He doesn’t know how much more of this he can take – he’s panting, completely withering away before her. He waited for this for so long, but never realized just how badly he wanted it – wanted her.

She clutches the back of his head, weaves her fingers through his dark locks, and they assault each other’s mouths again, impatient, yearning. He shudders and she swallows the sound, covets it – takes it as her own.

He groans low in his throat, and watches as she strips him of his pants and then does the same with her own. When she comes to rest above him again, she takes his hand in hers… brings a metal finger to her mouth, tongue flicking out and tasting. He squirms under her when she sucks, hard, against the length of it.

" _Christ_ ," he closes his eyes, tilts his head into the pillow.

If he keeps watching he's not going to last through this. A few seconds pass, and he hears her small chuckle, and then her voice....soft and low.

“When I first saw you,” she bends down, fingers trailing along his inner thighs, “I knew I wanted you. Not like this, but I wanted… something. I wanted you to notice me.”

She’s – he can’t even form a coherent thought – intoxicating – _amazing_ –

She takes him in her hand, and he suppresses a moan when he feels her slide on top of him. She's so wet and – _god_ – her walls suddenly clench around his entire length. His eyes roll back into his head.

She grasps his wrists in her hands and pushes his arms above his head. Soft red curls brush along his chest as she curves her spine. Her hair makes a curtain around his face, and she kisses him again – slowly, sensually – but she grinds against him, hard, hips rolling until he is sweating and practically begging.

He doesn’t – he can’t – _fuck_ – she’s so good –

She sucks at his bottom lip until it’s swollen, abuses the skin at his neck until she’s left her mark on him a dozen times over, his pulse stuttering at a frantic pace beneath her. She tastes like wine and venom and everything he’s ever wanted. When she locks her green eyes with him, there’s something there – an emotion he can’t quite place. Subterfuge and falsehoods and half-truths dominate her existence, but he knows. He knows without her saying it that she feels the same about him.

When he thrusts inside of her and she meets him precisely – perfectly – it reminds him of the trajectory of a knife, he can imagine every single kill shot a fraction of a second before he executes it, can see every angle and opening and opportunity. When she thrusts against him and he meets her precisely – perfectly – it reminds him of loading a gun and firing.

Bang –

She closes her eyes, throws her head back with a cry of pleasure as she rocks back and forth on top of him. She bites her lip, losing herself in the friction, her hands roaming along his chest in uneven patterns, nails biting into his skin hard enough to make him bleed. He digs his fingers into her hips, thrusting, meeting every single movement in perfect synchronization just like when they used to spar – it’s clockwork, it’s –

He’s been in fear for his life maybe four times. Four times when he thought he might actually die. Four times he cheated death. Four times he prevailed. But he’s not sure if he can survive this. He’s not sure he _wants_ to. This is – this is – worse than torture – this is – _god_ – she’s terrible, cruel, ruthless – she’s _fucking incredible._

Bang –

They’re still high off adrenaline, still high off the hunt, still high off the fact that Nikolai's body is in a corner of the room bleeding at the neck. He can’t catch his breath. His thrusts become more erratic, desperate, and uneven as he tries to keep up with the vicious pace she sets.

She’s going to kill him, and he would let her.

Bang –

She pushes him to the brink and sparks of sensation are racing across his entire body and his metal hand is digging so hard into the mattress he thinks he may tear straight through it – he inhales sharply, tries to breathe –

Bang –

His muscles go haywire, and his mind is so cloudy – he's buried so deep inside her – and she's squeezing and clenching around him so tight –

His fingers claw at the sheets, he closes his eyes, and – and – his teeth grind together as he tries to stay in control. It’s only when he feels Natalia bite into his shoulder, muffling a scream against his skin as she contracts around him and comes that he lets himself come completely undone underneath her. He yells her name in utter, blissful, ecstasy.

* * *

They wipe down the room; erase all evidence they were there. (Well, save that hole in the wall.) They use a room-service cart to take Nikolai’s body out of the Astoria, and throw him in the trunk of a car the Winter Soldier hotwires. They dispose of his body in the Bolshaya Neva River behind an abandoned warehouse.

On the train he laces a metal gloved hand through hers. She rests her head against his shoulder and an hour into the trip he can hear her breathing, soft and steady, next to him.

This is what he knows. Since waking up in 1955, he can quote data from every confirmed kill; the weapon used, round used, the location, the time of day, the wind and weather, and exactly where the target was hit. He remembers all of it. It is all he remembers. He does not know anything but the mission.

In the field, it is a non-stop calculation of mathematics and refinements for temperature, humidity, altitude, enemy routes, and ballistic trajectories. In the field, he spends days crawling through dirt and tall grasses or slinking across the tops of buildings, getting bit by every bug imaginable and scratched by every thicket and bush. In the field, he looks through the scope of his sniper rifle for hours waiting for his target. In the field, the only person he can trust is himself. In the field, he sleeps in ten minute bursts, finger never leaving the trigger, because to sleep any longer means the possibility between life and death. In the field, the only person he can trust is himself.

This is what he knows.

She is sleeping next to him.

He feels liquid prick at his eyes, and he blinks rapidly.

She trusts him. She trusts him enough to let down her guard and fall asleep next to him. Something stirs deep in his heart, and – and – this is what he knows –

Sometimes he gets flashes. Things that feel like memory or even pieces of identity but he can't place them. There's no context to the fragments. His mind wanders and sometimes stills, fixated on the simplest things – a man's youthful laugh, the warm aroma of pancakes in the morning, the burst and color of fireworks.

There's no connecting the pieces though. It's too loose. Memory isn’t memory without feeling behind it. It’s just information, and his mind scatters in each and every direction around this information, sporadic, and irregular as he tries to decipher it.

Before her, he tried to ignore these pieces. They meant nothing, had no place. The missions gave him a purpose, a way to shut them out.

With her, he feels –

He doesn't know. It's not something he can explain. He feels some part of him is trapped, somewhere, deep inside, and when she touches him she touches this part and it sparks to life and –

Things suddenly _matter_. Things suddenly mean something. He doesn't know his name. She gives him one. She's a connection, a tether that makes him feel _real._ He no longer feels trapped and helpless. He has a name. лапушка.

Eight hours later they are back in Moscow. The yellow painted Lubyanka building, KGB Headquarters, looms before them.

* * *

 "You went off task. What’s worse is you somehow managed to rope him into doing this,” Natalia’s handler has been fuming since the second they walked into Moiseyev’s office.

"That’s not his fault," Natalia starts.

"Silence!" Moiseyev slams a palm-open hand on his desk.

He twists his head, faces the Winter Soldier. "We gave you a very clear set of instructions. Return with the Black Widow under any circumstances right away. Instead you went off task, and completely off grid to help her chase down a man on an unsanctioned mission."

He says the name Black Widow as if it is a slur, as if it is not a mark of her training, her prestige, her courage. The fingers of the Winter Soldier’s left hand twitch.

"Unsanctioned? I was asked to take care of the defector and whoever was helping her. That was my mission, and I did it," Natalia says, voice firm. "Sending him didn’t help matters, and if I reported in, it would’ve been too late. Nikolai was leaving in the morning according to my intel. I’ve already put all of this in my briefing. Pardon me, sir, but I’m not sure what the problem is here."

"The problem is you shot a girl without approval," Moiseyev hisses. "Your actions have been in direct violation of protocol, and now you dare to stand in front of me and defend such flagrant acts of conduct?"

Natalia does not flinch, does not give away what truly happened in the forest – does not want to give away the fact that she was not in control. She hates that, more anything. The Winter Soldier knew that from the moment he first met her, from the first moment they fought. Control is something she thrives on. He understands this sentiment well.

But he can’t listen to this any longer.

"She shot a girl in the woods because of Department X’s errors, if you want to blame someone – blame them."

"Excuse me?" Moiseyev’s voice is dangerously quiet, and his body goes completely still in his leather backed chair.

"The memories they implanted in her, they broke down. She snapped. How can you expect her to be an effective agent when she doesn’t even know what’s true or false?"

The Winter Soldier sees Natalia shift uncomfortably beside him, her eyebrows furrowing – wondering why he’s speaking up for her, probably. Major Moiseyev, however, looks as if he’s ready to burst several blood vessels, his cheeks going ruddy and fat with rage. He bolts from his chair, and comes to stand directly in front of the Winter Soldier, facing him dead in the eyes. Gudanov chews at his cheek, presses his glasses against his nose and simply looks on.

"Know your place, Winter Soldier. You are not a person. You are a resource, and one we expect to follow commands,” Moiseyev bites out each word, his composure completely fraying at the seams.

The Winter Soldier’s eyes are burning, but it’s a good burn. He feels as if hasn’t slept in days and it’s a relief, for the first time in a very long time he feels alive.

He could murder them all if he liked. He imagines his metal grip around General Karpov’s throat, crushing the life out of him. He can hear the beautiful, satisfactory snap of his bones breaking in his ears and the Winter Soldier smiles despite himself.

He could murder them all. He wonders why he doesn’t.

He could murder them all. He could paint a canvas of red on the already reddened corridors of the Red Room. He could destroy Rodchenko’s laboratory. He could destroy this very office. He could put a knife through each of their hearts. In the back of their skulls. He could blow their brains out and leave them plastered to the walls. He wonders why he doesn’t.

He could murder them all. It would be easy. Quick. Efficient.

He could murder them all and leave her alive. Only her.

Only her. Only her.

Only Natalia.

He wonders why he doesn’t.

“I’ve fulfilled the mission,” the Winter Soldier snaps. “Here she is.”

“You think we don’t know you’re _fucking_ her?!” Moiseyev is inches from the Winter Soldier’s face, practically spitting in it.

The fingers of his left hand twitch again.

The Winter Soldier acts because the mission dictates it. The Winter Soldier moves because the mission dictates it. The Winter Soldier has protocol, the Winter Soldier has orders. The Winter Soldier does not want, does not desire, and – and –

“Do you think she _belongs_ to you, Soldier?” Moiseyev’s deriding laughter echoes in the small, cramped room.

And then it’s like a switch is being flicked. A key turns. A door opens. And he is moving, moving, moving, through that door. A key turns.

Flick.

Switch.

He hears her voice in the back of his mind.

_Rules were meant to be broken._

Moiseyev’s trachea crushes beneath his flesh hand, his ruddy cheeks puff and his eyes bulge, and the Winter Soldier smiles.

“She does not belong to you, to me, or to the Motherland,” he hears Gudanov shouting for the guards, and he does not care. “She belongs only to herself.”

He lifts Moiseyev by the throat and slams his face into his treasured desk, bashing his skull in, and his blood smears across the dark wood as his stout body crumples to the floor.

He hears feet running down the hallway, gauges it is six pairs, and when he turns on his heel two of them are already at the door.

Fighting in tight, enclosed quarters may cut off escape options but it can prove useful. The Major’s office is located at the end of the hallway, and the entrance creates a choke point that the Winter Soldier exploits with ease. Disposing of targets attempting to come through a single door in a practically single-file line is child’s play to him.

He does not think. He does not need to. He sees his opponent’s attacks before they execute them, he sees the perfect trajectory for a killing blow, sees how they might block and he sees the way around this. He sees each kill shot a fraction of a second before he executes it.

Killing is as natural to him as breathing. Deadly with a knife. Deadly with a rifle. _Even deadlier hand to hand._

Blood gushes down one guard’s shirt.

He tears a gaping hole through another’s chest.

Two necks snap beneath his capable hands.

Uncontrollable rage that has been lurking behind his eyes for three years unleashes in overwhelming precision. Faces blur, but he does not lose track of a single target. Violence is not a haze to him. It is clarity.

Their bodies barely have time to hit the floor before the Winter Soldier is crushing another man's skull. He kills five men in perfect succession before they can even pull the trigger on their guns.

“Dukljan,” a voice says loudly.

The Winter Soldier’s grip fails him, his fingers slack almost immediately against the sixth man’s neck and he collapses to the ground in three, short and stuttering movements, his body succumbing to the trigger word.

General Vasily Karpov enters the room with Gudanov following close behind. He casually steps over the dead bodies piled near the entrance, a grimace on his face that contrasts with his meticulous appearance and perfectly ironed uniform. He makes a tsking noise, and regards the Winter Soldier for a moment.

“Well, it’s a good thing you called me, Sergei. His programming is showing cracks for the first time. Tell the Professor to start preparing.”

“Hm,” he glances at Natalia. “I remember you. Natalia Romanova. Red Room. Did he do this for you?”

“No,” her voice is tight, composed. “He did it for himself.”

Karpov chuckles for a minute as he looks between Natalia and the Winter Soldier. “I’m sure you had nothing to do with it. Why don’t you let me worry about my own soldiers from now on, little Natalia…”

He turns his back to her, motions for Gudanov to grab the Winter Soldier.

“When I was a child battling the Germans, the soldiers used to say there are wolves in the night,” Natalia’s voice cuts through again.

Gudanov stops in his tracks, stilling. Karpov’s shoulders tense.

"However good you feed the wolf, it still looks onto the forest," she says.

It is an old proverb, one which the Winter Soldier recognizes. Ско́лько во́лка ни корми́, он всё в лес смо́трит _._

Karpov slowly turns to face her again, raising a hand to stroke at his thick mustache. His bald head shines against the fluorescent lights.

“He is a wolf, then?” Karpov’s upper lip curls into a sneer.

The Winter Soldier grits his teeth, tries to stand, but his body does not respond. His limbs are too heavy, too tight, too slow. Locked into place. His brain issues command after command but they are immovable. He can only listen.

“You cannot change a wolf’s nature. He will cut his leash tomorrow, a year from now, fifty years from now,” Natalia tries to keep her mouth soft and her expression unreadable, “But you cannot change a wolf’s nature. You cannot make a wolf a dog.”

“Explain this, then,” Karpov crosses his arms. “How can a dog cut its leash when it doesn’t know the leash exists?”

“You think…” her voice goes quiet, her eyes cast downward for a moment. “You think loyalty can be programmed? True loyalty?”

“I think science is capable of a great many things, and reprogramming the human mind is among those. Of course, it is a complex matter, of course there are drawbacks,” he looks down at the Winter Soldier who is still stuck on the ground, having trouble breathing, “But yes, it is possible.”

“You fool,” she raises her eyes, and the Winter Soldier sees anger flash in them, “Loyalty can only be programmed so far. True loyalty is earned. It is earned and it is earned through the shedding of blood, through sacrifice, through the knowledge that the man next to you would lay down his life for you. You cannot program devotion.”

"We are all of us servants to a higher purpose, Black Widow. The advancement of our Soviet Union. Do not put yourself above the needs of the collective. Think of what he has accomplished for our cause, think of what we can continue to accomplish."

"I –" she hesitates. "It wasn’t his choice.”

"Are you any different? I know how the KGB procured your loyalty. Department X saved Ivan’s life."

"It was my choice. What happens to me, what happens – ”she takes a small, barely perceptible breath. “It was _my_ choice. Can he say the same?”

“What is this, love? Do you love him, is that it? You love this – this – thing? This twisted creature? He’s barely even human.”

“It’s respect,” Natalia spits out, voice raw with emotion, and the Winter Soldier sees her biting back tears. “Love is for children.”

“You’re a clever girl, aren’t you?” Karpov steps closer to her. "You have a bright future. Would you waste it in defense of these misguided ideals? In defense of an American? Do you no longer believe in our country?"

“I am simply telling you the truth. I only hope you live long enough to see the day,” she stares directly into his eyes, “And then I hope you remember this moment as he snuffs the life out of you.”

“Get her out of my sight,” he jerks his head at Gudanov.

Gudanov and two guards walk Natalia out, and the Winter Soldier can do nothing but look on. He knows it is the last time he will ever see her, knows when he awakens he will not remember her.

Bands of muscle tissue in the Winter Soldier’s vocal cords stretch and tear as if on the verge of shattering completely. Her name comes out, quiet, and intense, “Natalia.”

This is the last time he will ever say it.

She curves her neck as they march her out the door, her green eyes meet his ice-blue ones, and then she is gone.

In the Red Room, he existed for those six weeks in moments between the clash of his flesh against her flesh as they sparred. In a hotel in Leningrad, he existed between the crush of her hips and the taste of her mouth. He breathed. He lived.

He _existed._

But ghosts aren't meant to exist.

Ghosts aren't meant to love _._

_~~Rules were meant to be broken.~~ _

* * *

There is a bag over her head and handcuffs around her wrists. She doesn’t know where they’re transporting her – only knows it can’t be good, because she knows Rodchenko will be waiting. She supposes it’s some kind of karmic joke when they throw her in solitary, back in that same dark hole she was in when she first came to the Red Room. They still haven’t learned it never frightened her and it will never frighten her.

But after several hours, Natalia slides to the floor and bangs her head back and forth on the wall.

 _“Salvage the mission if necessary,” he said._ Liar. That was never one of his orders. He could have saved himself, could have taken her back immediately. This is the price for sentimentality.

“Idiot,” she chokes out, but there is no bite to the word.

And suddenly she is back on that table. Her feet are cold, hanging off the edge, and the padding is too firm, just as it was before. Professor Rodchenko is beside her, writing in his notepad, muttering to himself in short, incessant phrases. Natalia wants to slam his head against the wall and gouge his eyes out, but they started a line on her the second they strapped her down, and she can barely keep her eyes open.

His voice is in her ear, murmuring platitudes and reassurances.

_Some people just don't fit together, Natalia. This is what happens when two weapons collide. Destruction, tragedy. Weapons aren’t meant to touch._

She feels as if she's been punched through the chest, and Rodchenko is all too eager to shove his hand inside her exposed cavity, play with her insides, and pluck more pieces of her away.

She thinks of him. Thinks of how they will cut him from her, and she knows he will be wiped, he will not remember her either. Tears sting at her eyes again. In all her life, she never believed she belonged to anyone but herself. When the choice is survival or nothing, you always – always – choose survival.

But this is no longer her choice.

_We found you the perfect fit, though. You will be doing your country an honor, my dear._

And then she is screaming, her body rigid as the machine whirrs to life.

They don't wipe her, not exactly. But they do make her forget.

They make her forget ice-blue eyes, and what it feels like to call something her own.

They implant her with new memories and they make her believe she loves a Soviet test pilot named Alexei Shostakov. They make her believe she's a dutiful wife, and she tries. She tries so hard to be something she's not.

One day she calls Alexei лапа and something clicks in the back of her mind – the word sounds _wrong_ , vile on her tongue. She chases it with vodka, trying to erase the taste in her mouth with something stronger, and never speaks the term again.

Names matter. They mean something.

In 1963 they tell her Alexei died in a rocket explosion – a casualty of the moon race. Her programming starts to crack again. All the fabrications, all the lies, start to bleed together, and Natalia is only left with a gnawing feeling that she is meant for more – that she can do more for her country. She wants a purpose more than anything.

It is exactly the motivation they want, and they use it to renew her loyalty once again. The KGB welcomes her back with open arms.

Верность партии. Верность Родине.

_Loyalty to the party. Loyalty to the Motherland._

Her saga as Black Widow continues.

For the next decade she performs her duties as a loyal KGB agent provocateur. She becomes more than a title. She becomes a legend – a master of subversion, an instrumental element in influencing the course of world events. She infiltrates numerous target groups, sows dissension among their ranks, and arranges countless assassinations and kidnappings. Whatever the KGB asks of her, it is done, and it is done without missing a beat.

Natalia is nothing if not efficient, her superiors say of her.

In May of 1968, she is at the forefront of the KGB's active measures to undermine the Prague Spring pro-democracy movement in Czechoslovakia in operation codename Progress. With a silver tongue and batted eyelashes, Natalia influences advisors and policy, and prepares conditions for a military invasion.

On August 20th, 1968, Warsaw Pact forces invade Czechoslovakia. Thousands of tanks and troops pour across the border to crush the democratization movement permanently.

She will always get the job done, her superiors say.

By dawn on August 21st, Czechoslovakia is an occupied country, but youths still march the streets. Downtown, they climb Soviet tanks, wave Czechoslovakian flags, others throw rocks and Molotov cocktails, and shout themselves hoarse chanting support for Alexander Dubček.

Through the din of smoke, protesting, and muddled voices, Natalia sees a man in the distance. He is no normal soldier. She briefly wonders if he is Spetsnaz, but decides this is not the case either, his motives are seemingly ulterior to the occupation of the city itself. There’s a mask over his mouth, black goggles covering his eyes, and he effortlessly strides through the street with a menacing authority that hypnotizes her. The wind blows, rustles his dark locks, and he drifts, alone, away from the core of the army, ignoring the pockets of scattered resistance in the street.

She feels a strange pull in her heart. Something tells her she knows this man, and her feet begin to move without her consent, her mind utterly abandoning pragmatism, and she breaks into a rapid sprint.

She loses sight of him for only a second, but that’s all it takes. He disappears in a haze of smoke, vanishing as if he was never there to begin with. Natalia skids to a halt in the confined, busy plaza that smells of machinery and tar and sweat, and a tremor racks through her chest. She knows this man, but –

She does not –

She knows this man. But she does not _remember_ this man.

Natalia freezes, unmoving, and unblinking. A numbness creeps up her fingertips.

Men and women run past her in waves – all of them scrambling to emigrate as quickly as possible. They bump into her – shove – push –

She knows this man. But she does not _remember_ this man.

In her mind's eye, she sees features blurred beyond recognition, hears voices fade into obscurity. There are fleeting impressions, crinkled and worn and not quite right – fissures and dents in the images and –

A noise resounds in her ears – a busy signal, like a telephone left off its hook. She falls to her knees in the crowded plaza. The signal is indistinct, muffled. A reflex of aggression surges through her and she slams a fist to the concrete. The busy signal transforms – a ringing in her ears – and it fires and snaps and reverberates off every surface of her skull, races across her neutral pathways with lightning quickness until she is clenching her stomach in abject terror, cramps shuddering through her – and –

My name is Natalia Romanova.  
My name is Natalia R-

She brings two numb fingers to her bottom lip – is she losing her mind? – the impressions are scratched and crinkled like paper – and – and –

She knows this man. But she does not _remember_ this man.

I am one of twenty-eight ballerinas with –  
I am number Five.

She remembers a table. Too firm. Too short. She remembers the table, but she does not remember what happened on the table.

Children are carried on the backs of their parents, luggage is dropped and left in the confusion, and in the commotion one of the children loses a doll. It lands near Natalia, and is immediately trampled under hundreds of pairs of feet. A child cries in the distance.

Natalia averts her eyes from the chaos, her stomach churning with guilt.

She returns to Moscow four days later to meet with her handler, and there are demonstrations in the Red Square, protests against the invasion.

One of the banners reads: За вашу и нашу свободу!  
_For your freedom and ours!_

The protestors are arrested and taken away in cars by secret police.

Bile rises in her throat.

Natalia remembers a girl with chestnut hair pulled tight in a bun, and pale pink lips. She remembers this girl had dreams, laughed and smiled shyly, and made Natalia remember what freedom felt like. She remembers her eyes, hollow shells where life once was. Natalia remembers she killed her.

Natalia remembers telling someone so long ago – someone she can't quite place, but knows the memory is true – she remembers telling them: rules were meant to be broken.

~~Верность партии. Верность Родине.~~

_~~Loyalty to the party. Loyalty to the Motherland.~~_

Years later, as more of the falsehoods and manufactured memories fall away; her mind brings back a single thread of truth to her. An American's voice, quiet and intense, whispers her name - _Natalia_ \- into her ear at night and Natasha wakes up in a cold sweat, a chill rippling up her spine.

She doesn't know the specifics, not for a while, but she knows she has lost something, something important, and she has no way of retrieving it. Something, no – _someone_ – was cut from her, and it’s a ghost rattling around in the confines of her brain and in between the shattered spaces of her heart. It’s the color of blood dripping on pure white snow.

She tries, night after night, to remember the voice. Who he was, what he meant to her. Her mind opens one door and then another blocks her path. She can hear pencil against paper, and a man muttering to himself in short, incessant phrases, and her head aches by the time she is through.

She steels herself, makes her heart cold, and resolves to forget lest it drive her mad.

In 2009, many years after her defection and the fall of the USSR, in Odessa she is shot through the lower left quadrant of her abdomen and in the distance the hot Ukrainian sun glints, brightly, off a flash of metal.

As blood seeps through the bullet wound, the cold in her heart cracks and shatters into a million little pieces – this is what happens when two – when two – when two

This is what happens when two weapons collide.

лапушка.

In 2009 she is made to remember.

An American’s voice, quiet and intense, whispers her name into her ear as she lies in surgery.

It’s the color of blood dripping on pure white snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, if you're not as familiar with the comics, i'm primarily going off nat's 616 origin story which is she was an adult when she entered the red room, and in the comics her memories of being a ballerina were implanted in her. most of the red room fic i've come across for her has her growing up a child in the red room, and i also wanted to delve a bit more into kgb hierarchy for their cold war history. as always, thanks to my friend minxie for beta'ing this.
> 
> there will be another chapter coming eventually which will go back to the present day plotline.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As a spy, part of your job is to stay five steps ahead of your enemies. Unfortunately, there are times you’re going to be discovered no matter what. This lifestyle has its perks. Natasha travels, has her own hours, and chooses her own jobs. The downside is the line of people who want to kill her gets dreadfully long.
> 
> "What the hell is going on?!” James yells over the noise. “I thought you said this was a _safe_ house!"
> 
> "It _is_ a safe house!" she yells back.

_[Names of poisons, names of_

_handguns, names of places we’ve been_

_together, names of people we’d be together,_

_Names of endurance, names of devotion,_

_street names and place names and all the names_

_of our dark heaven]_

* * *

They catch a marshrutka leaving from Nevsky Prospect, and they depart a short ride later in the Theatre Square. Natalia tells him they can walk the rest of the way.

His feet stop of their own volition in the middle of melting puddles of snow. After a moment Natalia realizes he isn’t following, and turns around. He stares at the outside of the building for a long while, brow furrowing.

The Mariinsky Theatre.

The name is wrong. He wonders when it was changed back. Many of the names here have been changed several times over. Guess that’s what happens when you’re frozen in a storage box for decades at a time.

“It’s just a little further,” Natalia says, but he isn’t paying attention.

His eyes swing to a place just on the other side of the theatre, a lone sidewalk – pedestrians and advertisements line the front of store walls next to it. He looks back at Natalia, and he can feel his hand shaking in the pocket of his coat but he doesn’t understand why. He tightens his hand into a fist and jogs to catch up with her.

“Did you see something?” she asks.

“Nothing.”

Twenty minutes later, through a side alley and a locked gate, they arrive. Natalia’s “safe house” – if you can call it that – is a single tiny, cramped, room with a red couch, a spare bathroom, and three walls lined with various guns. Not quite the same as her cushy apartment.

“You don’t mess around,” he whistles.

She pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head, revealing her bright green eyes, and gives him a sideways grin. “We don’t need all of this. I just came to grab some tools, not sure exactly what I’ll be walking into. I like to be prepared.”

"So, I know why I'm after this guy, but why are you?" James asks.

Hector Shaw is the current United States ambassador to Russia. In the early nineties he was consul general of the Saint Petersburg consulate. When he finished his tenure as consul general, Shaw moved back to the United States. He ran for office at home, became a State Senator for a short term until President Ellis recently appointed him ambassador to Russia.

"Maria’s been working at Stark Industries. She knows I've been underground for a while, and despite S.H.I.E.L.D being destroyed, she and Fury are still working to uncover Hydra agents. They called me up, said they saw some hints in the Hydra data leak that led them to believe he may be dirty. They found out I was nearby and asked for my help. I'm doing it for them.”

She fixes him with a curious stare.

"You still haven't told me, how do you know Hector Shaw is Hydra?" she asks.

James' stomach churns.

He has a few, brief, memories of this man. It's hard to put a name to a face that only appears intermittently in between moments of remembrance, but little less than a month ago he had a sudden recollection of memory. He remembered seeing Alexander Pierce shaking a man’s hand, and he was able to figure out that man was Hector Shaw.

In the pit of his gut, he knows Shaw had something to do with his transfer from the Eastern Bloc back to the United States. Hydra sank their teeth into every single level of government, and he knows they're the ones that originally engineered his creation. He doesn't know why they would have needed to barter a deal, but he assumes it happened during the fall of the Soviet Union. He was traded back like nothing more than an object.

"I just do," he says, not eager to give away his cards. “You ask too many questions.”

She raises a brow; eyes narrowing with what he assumes is skepticism. "You already mentioned you remembered him, but it's alright if you don't want to divulge anymore."

She opens a cabinet underneath one of the gun racks, and places something in his hand. He looks down. It’s an inner-ear communication device.

"Anyways,” she continues. “You said you couldn't find this guy? Fury didn't mention that to me. Just said the information on him from the data leak corresponded to his tenure at the consulate so he wanted the consulate's information. Shouldn't he be in Moscow?"

She brushes blond hair back, sets her own earpiece around her ear. It’s a noticeable, wireless Bluetooth headset. He assumes it’s part of the cover.

"I was in Moscow two weeks ago and he's not staying at the official residence. I haven't been able to get a bead on him. Apparently he's on 'vacation'," he air quotes for Natalia's benefit. "I think he's become paranoid since the Hydra leak, probably came up with a good story for the Diplomatic Security Service and secured himself temporary accommodations. His last meeting was at this consulate, and I'm hoping they also have details of his travel arrangements."

"Why would he get paranoid about the data leak all of a sudden?" Natalia asks. "It's been a year, after all."

James shoves a hand in his pocket, shrugs. "Who knows.”

Natalia doesn't say anything, but he sees her gauging his reaction for several seconds. Her face doesn't give away anything going on in her head but he can tell by the way her gaze lingers she knows he's not telling her everything.

She has him test the ear piece with her, checks to make sure everything is working before she hoists a Dragunov from the wall and sets it on the coffee table in front of the red couch. She tosses a backpack on the table next to it.

“That’s for you,” she says as she approaches the opposite wall, opens a safe set atop a table. “I’ve got a cover prepared already to get past security, so there shouldn’t be any problems. Just to be safe, though, I’m going to need you to set up somewhere so you can warn me if I’m walking into anything. There’s infrared in the sights.”

“Wait, you don’t want me to go in with you?” he stops her when she tries to move past him, grabs her by the arm. “You’re sidelining me? You think I can’t handle this because of what, that guy on the street? Give me a break.”

"I never said that, and I'm not sidelining you. I'm asking you to be my eyes."

“This was a waste of time,” he says, dropping her arm.

"Enough with this charade, Barnes. We both know why you really sought me out. You’ve been in the wind for a year. Steve hasn’t heard from you once, and suddenly, you show up in my apartment. You need someone to hack into the consulate’s archives and you know I can do it faster than you. That's the real reason you came to me."

He shrugs, but doesn’t attempt to deny her claims. She shakes her head, and picks up the sniper rifle from the coffee table. She shoves it into his hand.

“This won’t even take long, there’s no reason for two of us in there. Just do me a favor and watch my back.”

“Fine,” he takes the rifle from her, the corners of his mouth twitching up. “Really? A Dragunov?”

“What? Too cliché?” he hears her soft laughter. “It’s the easiest to procure in this area.”

“When in Russia, I suppose.”

Their eyes meet for a moment, both of them smiling at each other, but James watches in confusion as Natalia’s face falls within the span of seconds. He clears his throat, suddenly extremely uncomfortable and unsure of what he’s missing.

"We may be going to get information on Hydra, but the people working in there are average citizens," Natalia says, breaking the silence. "So, don't get trigger happy."

She glances, purposely, at his hand. He hesitates to follow her gaze. He already knows what he’ll see. He feels it. Another moment passes. She waits. He finally tears his eyes down, forces himself to look.

His finger is on the trigger.

The Winter Soldier acts because the mission dictates it. The Winter Soldier moves –

The Winter Soldier has – has – protocol –

The Winter Soldier moves –

"Sorry, it's...." he trails off, swallowing hard.

James removes his index finger from the trigger, and places it to the side.

A finger on the trigger is second nature. It's comfortable, even familiar to him. It's muscle memory that will take time to break. In the past, when he took out a gun, there was no doubt in his mind he was going to use it. Gun safety wasn't a priority on the Winter Soldier's mind when his primary function was to _be_ the gun.

"I know," she says quietly. “I trust your judgment.”

He avoids looking her directly in the eyes, anxiously chews at his bottom lip. There’s no judgment in her face, just understanding, and it hits him at a place deep in his chest. Warmth spreads through him, and he hopes to god he's not blushing like some idiotic boy.

She slaps him on shoulder. “Let’s go.”

* * *

She splits up with James on Furshtatskaya Street.

The buildings are all tightly packed, nestled right next to each other in a long line down either side of the street. The consulate is just a short way down, a dull shade of rose paint streaking the outside.

Visitors aren't allowed to bring any electronics into the consulate, not even a laptop or a cell phone - basically anything that could potentially be used to record. Tech support, however, is a different story.

It’s true that getting into the consulate would be far easier if Natasha had access to all the old S.H.I.E.L.D toys – a photostatic veil for one – but she can go back to the basics when she needs to. Her identification is a fake she made three days ago when she first got the call from Fury, establishing her as working for a technology support company that handles contracts with the consulate.

She hands a tall, middle-aged security guard her ID. “Irina Zlataryova” is there to patch and update the server, along with installing a new tape drive backup system.

They put her equipment, which includes a screwdriver kit, her laptop, her cell phone, several flash drives, network cables, and an external hard drive, through the metal detectors. She steps through next, waiting as the middle-aged man examines the screen. They don’t question the Bluetooth in her ear. Contractors are allowed much more leeway than regular visitors to the consulate.

They find nothing suspicious.

"You're good," he says, gruffly.

Another security guard hands her back the messenger bag, and she slings it over her shoulder.

"Which way to the server room?" she asks, politely.

"Go through those double doors, take a right, and it's the third door on your left," the first security guard responds.

"Thank you."

When she enters the server room, Natasha immediately makes her way to one of the stations. She opens a 19-inch rack and places her laptop on one of the sliding trays. She connects her laptop to the server and logs in.

She presses the side of her Bluetooth, patches through to James. “I’m in the server room.”

She checks the database and starts pulling all the information from the time period in which Hector Shaw worked at the consulate and downloads the files to her laptop. She does a brief perusal of the past several weeks, skims the most recent files to see if there's any information about his recent meeting with the current consul general and any travel arrangements after he left, but she’s not seeing anything.

"Can you check and tell me if anyone is in the third floor, second office? There should be a balcony overlooking it."

He responds a few seconds later. "The window's blinds are open and I'm not seeing anything. I'm not picking up any heat signatures inside either."

"I'm going to run up there. It used to be Shaw's office."

She double checks the map of the building, imprints it in her mind, before unplugging her laptop and sliding it back in her messenger bag.

"Why? He hasn't been consul general for years."

“I’ve already got everything I need from here. I just want to cover my bases.”

She pulls her cell phone from the front pocket of the bag, and checks the slit in the window of the server room before darting out. She smiles sweetly when a woman holds the elevator down the hall for her just before it closes. She slides between the metal, thanking her.

If there's one thing Natasha has learned working in covert ops, it's that people generally don't ask many questions if they believe you're supposed to be somewhere. Even if you’re a new face, if you passed security to get this far, then surely you're in the right place. Most people go through life with this kind of detached and unquestioning ignorance.

When the elevator opens on the third floor, Natasha walks at a casual pace past a few employees. Halfway down the hallway, she reaches the consul’s office. She does a quick glance around to make sure it’s clear, then holds up her cell phone, and waits as the program decrypts the cipher lock combination on the door. The green holograph displays the pass code. She inputs the numbers: 5 2 7 4

She hears a beep, presses down on the metal handle and quickly shuts the door behind her. She flips on the light, and does a brisk, but careful sweep of the room. Searching a civilian's office is fairly straightforward. Unless there's a safe or a lot of furniture, there aren't too many great hiding places with easy access.

Natasha moves behind the consul’s desk, and brings the desktop computer to life. In the corner of her vision, she notices some old wiring stapled to the bottom edge of the wall that seems out of place. She follows the trail of it with her eyes, and it disappears behind a bookshelf. She slides the bookshelf away from the wall, slowly, careful to not tip the books over – the last thing she needs is a mess to clean up.

There's what seems to be a sliding door behind the shelf. It appears the door was closed with some kind of hastily applied sealant, she can see the outline of the foam substance in between the cracks. She opens her toolkit, and stabs a screwdriver in the middle of the panel, wrenching it forward. The sliding door budges, but only barely. She repeats this a few times, chipping away at the sealant as she thrusts the screwdriver through the slit in the wall. On the last try, she grunts and wrenches the screwdriver forward again with all her strength.

“Are you doing strenuous activity in there?”

“Shut up, Barnes.”

The paneling splinters and breaks free from its sealant, and she pries the double doors open with both hands. When they open, she sees a row of shelves and a large hole in the back of the wall, fraying wires and cables that look as if they’ve been torn straight out.

She runs a finger along one of the shelves, and a thick layer of dust coats the tip of her print. There are several VHS tapes left on the bottom shelf, and she picks each of them up. The dates on the tapes vary, but they’re all from the mid to late nineties. The tape has been removed from them, so she couldn’t even watch them if she wanted to.

"Did you find something?" she hears James over her comm.

"There used to be a surveillance system installed here. It's been stripped straight out of the wall, but there's still old wiring here. He had it hidden behind a bookshelf."

"You're thinking Shaw recorded all his meetings with Hydra?"

"Possible. I've seen people do it enough times before. They always want to protect themselves and blackmail is usually their go-to. I used evidence like this against a lot of people back when I worked for the KGB. Turned their blackmail into my own,” she sighs. “People never change."

Natasha shuts the doors, and shoves the bookshelf back into place. She makes her way back to the desktop computer.

"Keep an eye out, I'm going to check his personal files and see if there's anything about Shaw's travel arrangements here."

* * *

"Are you humming a Bruce Springsteen song?" Natalia asks, and he can hear her fingers clicking against the keyboard.

“Is that who it is? I don’t know, the car I jacked a few weeks ago when I was in Moscow only had the one CD. I was surprised it was in English.”

He tilts the sniper rifle, trains the reticule right over her, and he continues humming.

She pauses momentarily, and in the lens, he sees her lips draw back, revealing her teeth in a wide smile.

"Oh, would you look at that…” he says. “She smiles.”

Through the scope, he sees her face instantly turn to stone – erasing all evidence of the smile like a burned intelligence document. "Focus, Barnes."

"Sorry, I forgot multitasking is a tough skill to acquire, _Romanoff_."

She turns in the direction of the window, looks straight in the direction of his rifle, and he sees her wink directly in his line of sight. He nearly jumps out of his skin.

_How the hell does she know my position?_

She smirks.

"Now, shut up and let me work," she turns back to the computer.

James pulls his eye back from the scope, and sees three men in business suits, street level, approaching the security gate. He trains the rifle over them, and can see cold areas on their bodies in the infrared.

“Say, darlin’, you think ‘average citizens’ usually carry submachine guns on them?”

“Excuse me?” Natasha asks.

“Three targets entering the side entrance now. Something tells me Shaw left some friends behind.”

James can see one man speaking to the security guard, exchanging identification. Another is on the phone, but he’s clearly faking the conversation. The third is pretending to check his watch. They’re far too alert to be there for purely innocent reasons.

“They might be Diplomatic Security?” Natalia’s tone is questioning.

“If that’s what they call Hydra these days, sure. So, I can shoot them, right?"

“What?! No, you can’t shoot them. We don’t need to make a scene,” Natalia hisses. “Hold on, I’ll take the balcony exit out of here.”

“I was kidding,” he says.

“No you weren’t.”

James scans the outside of the consulate, there are a few people on the street, but it’s not overly crowded in this area today. Once the three agents pass the outside security check, he follows their body temperatures into the building, and tells her it’s clear.

“No one’s looking up in that direction. Go to the right building, now.”

He sees her climb through the window, close it behind her, and activate the grappling hook in her Widow bracelet. She attaches to the building next to the consulate and jumps off the balcony, swinging. Her body slams into the other building’s wall, but she manages to slide down to the pavement safely and quickly.

James pulls back from the window he’s been perched in, makes quick work of disassembling the Dragunov, and stores the pieces in the backpack. He slings it over his shoulder.

* * *

After a hasty exit from the consulate, they return to Natasha’s apartment and she opens up her laptop and begins combing through the files. James pulls a chair up next to her at the kitchen table – and he’s so close she can feel her entire body vibrating – did he really have to sit so close –

She drums her fingers against the glass, tries to ignore the way his proximity sets her nerves off in the most delicious, albeit troublesome, way.

Usually she’s better at this. Hiding her emotions is a simple task, something she doesn’t even need to actively think about doing, but every time his elbow brushes against hers it sends goose bumps prickling up her arm and she has to hold her breath.

It’s ridiculous. It’s not his fault. It isn’t. He doesn’t even remember their time together, but –

He runs a hand through his hair and pulls it into a messy ponytail with a hair tie – one apparently stolen from her bathroom. He brushes his bangs behind an ear, clear blue eyes focusing back on the monitor screen. He drops his elbow back to the glass table, and it rubs against hers again.

She groans.

She slides her chair out. “I’m going to get some air.”

She ignores the perplexed expression on his face, grabs her coat, and leaves.

It has been two days since he came to visit her. She is supposed to be gone already. The night he showed up, she was going to take care of the consulate job the next day – get in and out, fast, quick, deliver whatever information she could to Fury before moving. There are people who will come searching for her; there are still loose threads she needs to cut.

Sharon has been helping her with that ever since she joined the CIA. She’s been looking out for her and giving her any leads she has on potential enemies hunting after her. Natasha appreciates it more than she can say, because trying to survive in the cold with no allies and no viable covers is the worst place a spy can be. Sharon’s information has saved her skin more times than she can count, and she will repay her for this one day no matter what it takes. Natasha knows it’s high time to move on from Saint Petersburg before things get ugly.

But it has been two days and she has not left. She walks down the block, and calls Steve from her burner phone, chews on the side of her fingernail as she struggles with whether to tell him or not. He tells her he is still searching for Bucky, and asks if she has heard any news.

She lies.

When she hangs up the phone she hates herself a little. Steve put his trust in her, and it’s an act she doesn’t take lightly. Trust and loyalty are hard commodities to come by for someone in her profession. But she lied, because she didn’t know what to say. It isn’t her place to tell. Not yet, anyways. She won’t lie for him forever.

When she returns to the apartment, she doesn’t see James anywhere in sight. She panics.

What if he left, what if he found the information while she was gone and got tired of waiting –

She turns the corner, checks the kitchen, rushes into her bedroom –

What if she can’t find him before he does something stupid, what if he disappears again –

What if –

She lets out the air she’s been holding when she sees him asleep in her bed. His lack of decorum is a little surprising to her, he’s supposed to be sleeping on her couch, but she heard the way he twisted and turned last night and doubts he ever actually sleeps at all.

His metal arm is tucked under her pillow, his head resting on it with his stomach flat on the bed. A small, half smile forms on her lips.

Natasha turns to leave the room, but stops when she hears him speaking. Russian. English. It’s gibberish practically, she can’t make out the words, but his breathing turns heavy. She rotates her head just in time to see his metal hand crushing straight through the headboard.

In two quick steps she’s leaning over the bed, shaking him on the shoulder.

"James," she says loudly. "James!"

Her eyes flit to his metal grip on the pieces of the headboard, keeps it in her line of sight in case things go sour.

"лапушка," she says, shaking him again.

His eyes fly open, his hands on either side of her waist, yanking her into the bed. She stumbles over his body for a moment before coming to an uncomfortable sitting position. His hot breath fans against her face, her hair a curtain around his cheeks.

"What did you call me?" he asks, in a tired, gravelly voice that sounds far too attractive to Natasha’s ears.

She hesitates.

"I called you James," she says.

"No…after that…you…"

He mouths the term, tastes it on his tongue, as if deciding whether he likes the way the words form on his lips before saying it, then he laughs, raising an eyebrow at her. “лапушка?”

She sucks in a sharp breath; déjà vu hits her like another bullet straight to the shoulder.

She pulls away from him like she’s been burned, and he realizes his hands are still on her waist and drops them quickly. He straightens himself up to a sitting position on the bed. Natasha’s teeth scrape against her lip when she sees her hair tie loosen. His messy hair falls around his cheeks in waves. He awkwardly scratches the back of his head.

"Sorry," he says, looking between her and the hole in the headboard. “Did I say something?”

“No,” she slides a mask over her features fast and hard, refusing to pay any mind to the ache plaguing her heart. “It’s nothing.”

Natasha drops her feet back to the floor, and moves to stand.

“Hey,” he grabs her hand. “It….it sounded familiar, that’s all. Almost like I was hearing my own name, as ridiculous as that might sound.”

His eyes light up when she tilts her head and looks back at him, and there’s a playful grin on his lips.

She rolls her eyes before raising an accusing eyebrow at the broken headboard, and punches him lightly on the shoulder. “Idiot.”

He simply laughs louder, the action causing little creases around his eyes to form, and Natasha laughs as well. Later that night, he asks her to call him лапушка more often. He says he likes the way it sounds to him coming from her lips.

And even later, when Natasha curls up in her sheets and lays her head against her pillow, the overwhelming scent of _him_ engulfs her and leaves her strangled for air. She wants nothing more than to invite him back into her bed, wrap an arm around his stomach and kiss at the scarring of his shoulder, hold him – if he needs her to – when the nightmares come because she understands, she understands what it’s like to be haunted by shadows of memory. She knows what it’s like to be afraid of the violent impulses in your heart and the whirlwind of destruction and decay your hands are capable of leaving in their wake.

She understands what it’s like to not trust your own mind, to have it disintegrate in pieces at the softest touch and crumble like fly paper, dissolving away.

The empty cold on the other side of her bed isn’t right.

It’s not _his_ cold.

Though he does not remember her, there are moments Natasha thinks she can feel him – thinks she can feel the man who once left footprints in the snow and carried her dead weight over his shoulder.

James remains reserved, distant, and although he cracked a few jokes, when they are in her apartment they do not talk often and when they do it is about the mission.

It reminds her of the first week he trained her.

_“Some people talk about you. They say you’re a ghost story, but rumors spread.”_

_He doesn’t acknowledge her presence, simply bends over and starts unlacing his boots. She notices he has taken to picking her first for sparring sessions now._

_“They say you killed a French Defense Minister earlier this year, is it true?”_

_He says nothing._

_"In January, in Madripoor, a British ambassador was killed at a New Year's Eve party along with four other people."_

_He maintains his silence, and rises to a standing position, taking off his gloves._

_"I recognize patterns when I see them. May 12. Paris. The car of an Algerian Peace Conference Envoy was blown up. The previous assassination of the French Defense Minister implicated the Algerian Nationalists. Convenient. So, that was you too, right?"_

_“You ask too many questions,” he grunts._

_“Is that a yes?” she persists._

_“Five, what do you want?”_

_“I –“ she hesitates. “I want to be as good as you. No. I want to be better.”_

_These are the most words she has gotten out of him since the first time they sparred, and it makes her cheeks flush with color._

_For so long, she envied the stories she heard, envied each whispered tale of his prowess. She envied him because he achieved what she could not – he is no one. He does not have a name, he has only a title._

_But face-to-face like this, the myth seems more a man than anything, and she’s not sure there’s anything worth her jealousy in the deadened gaze he fixes her with._

_She wants to know who he is beyond his title._

_He nods, seems to accept her words, but then his eyes narrow. She isn’t prepared for it when he strikes out at her using the full force of his metal fist._

_He waits for her to get back up – a small courtesy on his part._

_She cannot afford to be unprepared if she wants to be better than him. He doesn’t say this to her, but his actions speak the words loud enough. Everything he teaches her, and everything he shows her is with his actions._

_And as she blocks a right punch, she realizes this is how they communicate. It’s why she was the only one able to bring him to the floor. This is how he talks to her. This is how she can peel back his layers. She just has to continue surprising him, and she will win. She will know him._

_This isn’t a fight. It’s a dance._

_And she is his only partner._

The memories are worn around the edges, and her recall is faded, but when he is so near her she can practically taste the past, it’s just there - just there on the tip of her tongue. The history and the longing she spent years trying to remember, and then even longer trying to forget.

Sometimes she places a hand at night to a scar on her abdomen, traces the torn cartilage and she feels him, feels him across her skin and deep inside her bones. She remembers blood and the way he yelled her name, _Natalia,_ breathless and intoxicated into the air.

For so long he never had a name. He was only the Winter Soldier, her лапушка. In 2009 she tried to find him, pulled and pulled on so many threads but only met dead end after dead end.

In Washington, she could not afford to be sentimental when he would not know how to be. Sentimentality cost them too much in the old days, and she could not let it cost her in these days.

 _"_ _It was him. He looked right at me like he didn't even know me,”_ _Steve said._

And as fresh blood seeped from the wound in her shoulder, it was another reminder that he did not remember her either. A shocking blow that Steve Rogers’ best friend, Bucky Barnes, was her лапушка.

How could she tell Steve that? That his best friend was a crucial and deeply personal part of her past – a part buried so deep she spent years struggling to remember him. How could she even begin to explain that when she was unsure whether he would ever remember her at all? There are some doors that should never be reopened.

She never knew his name in those days.

_James._

She muffles the word into her pillow, wraps it around her tongue so she does not forget it, whispers it to herself over and over because though he may not remember her, he remembers her name and in those days a name was more than a word, it was a weapon.

She remembers the sound of a body being thrown in a river, remembers the way he pressed his lips to her like every brush of his mouth would be his last. He knew, she muses, even then, some part of him knew they would not last. She knew it too.

_James. James. James._

She chants it, so low she can barely hear her own voice, just a tiny, tiny noise in the dark.

But she chants it until her voice is hoarse and cracked, chants it until he is no longer a ghost in a graveyard – just a man on the other side of her wall sleeping on her couch.

She chants it as old memories tear through her and chants it until she can see the parts of the man he is, and the man he once was, stitch together before her eyes. The stitching is messy and imperfect, reinvented identities always are. She knows this. He will never be her лапушка again, not in the same way he was before.

But…

She thinks, maybe…just maybe, he could be her James.

* * *

He doesn’t remember much of the Red Room. Only jumbled, incoherent, flashes of memory. He remembers he trained her, but the memories are a blur. The clearest memory he has is of the first time they sparred. He remembers the way she caught him off guard then, the way her lower legs wrapped around his neck and she brought him to the floor. He knows her name – Natalia – and it’s one of the truest pieces of information he knows, but he doesn’t remember it being told to him. He remembers her number in the Red Room was Five, and he keeps trying to understand how he could have possibly learned her name, but everything else about that time period is a blur to him. He sees flickers occasionally, sees her smiling and laughing, then it shifts and he sees tears staining her face, and –

There’s something else he sees but he doesn’t know if it’s real. He sees her head thrown back in ecstasy, her shoulders bare, and then the image is gone too fast, vanishing before his eyes.

He doesn’t know what to believe.

There are things he thinks he should remember, but the details elude him. Some strange, undiscovered part of himself thinks he should know how her skin tastes, the beat of her pulse, the way her gasps and moans sound, the rise and fall of her chest when she sleeps.

He should know these things, he thinks, but he doesn’t know why. Sometimes he watches her, and feels his need for her so keenly his chest aches. It is crippling, and absolutely consuming, and the need to know her, to understand what he is missing, weighs him down like bricks being piled over his body. It’s as if he once lived a different life, was once a different person, a person who cared for her, but he can’t _remember_.

Before he began staying with Natalia, there were nights he fell onto a bed, a couch, even a floor, and wished for emptiness. When you are empty, you do not feel, ache, hunger, think, or even hurt. If he could not feel as the Winter Soldier, it would have been easier. But he did. He felt the fear that set his hands trembling and the fear that set the muscles in his neck straining violently. He felt his body convulse over and over and over and though he did not remember his memories he never forgot the pain, never forgot what the chair meant, because his body would not let him forget.

How funny it is that humans only feel alive when they suffer.

Every time she passes by him in the apartment, shoulder just barely touching his when she slides past him, he vividly relives their moments on the causeway. He can feel her thighs, tight and deadly, around his neck, remembers one hand gripping at her leg and the other just barely managing to keep her garrote from stringing him around the neck.

He remembers the feeling of anger that bubbled up in him each time; the anger that caused him to pull a knife on her in their sparring session, and the undeniable rage that coursed through him after she shot him straight in his goggles. He remembers wanting to break her; to beat her at her own game. He remembers telling the other men: о н а м о я.

He glances up at her while he’s washing his coffee cup in the sink and sees her holding the phone between her ear and shoulder as she taps away at her keyboard while talking to Sharon – a friend of hers and Steve’s, apparently. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, dark red, soft and wavy curls framing her cheeks. It is longer than it was in Washington. She brings a hand to her hair, tossing it behind her shoulder. He watches and…

He swallows hard when he sees her (way too tiny) fleece pajama shorts ride up as she brings a knee up on the couch cushion, showing off the expanse of those same toned thighs she wrapped around his neck.

She twists her head and their eyes meet. His grip tightens around the ceramic coffee mug as water from the faucet washes over the back of his hand. A coy smile appears on her full lips before she turns her attention back to her laptop.

He watches her and he realizes…

He wants nothing more than a rematch.

_She is mine._

* * *

They pour over the rest of the information Natasha gleaned from the consulate visit that morning, but still don’t find anything of use. The one thing they know is that it’s far too clean. Natasha suspects they won’t find wherever the ambassador is keeping those tapes in this information, but thinks she can still find where he might have holed up after leaving the consulate.

“This is getting us nowhere,” James stands up from his chair, and begins to pace the room.

“Well, with that attitude, yes,” Natasha mutters. “Don’t be so impatient.”

“I’ve been patient for seventy years,” he quips.

She chews at the side of her fingernail a moment as she scrolls through the documents. James makes himself another pot of coffee while she works through it.

“Hold on. Here. Some finances don’t seem to be adding up.”

After a few minutes, she shows him what she’s found. There’s money being funneled through several offshore accounts, one of them recently paid off a dacha located along Lake Ladoga.

James plods back to the living room, satisfied with what they’ve found, and probably intent on cleaning his gun for the five hundredth time if Natasha is any guess.

"Um, are you expecting someone?" James turns to look at her, taking a sip of his coffee.

Natasha glances up, hears a loud, thumping knock at the door –

"GET DOWN!"

She tackles James just after a bullet flies through his mug. The coffee in his cup displaces and liquid splashes against his white t-shirt. She lands on top of him –

There’s another single round of fire, followed by a quick succession.

As a spy, part of your job is to stay five steps ahead of your enemies. Unfortunately, there are times you’re going to be discovered no matter what. This lifestyle has its perks. Natasha travels, has her own hours, and chooses her own jobs. The downside is the line of people who want to kill her gets dreadfully long.

Natasha rolls off James, and with one hand he slides his SIG P226 off the coffee table. Both of them crawl behind the couch for the closest, immediate cover.

"What the hell is going on?!” he yells over the noise. “I thought you said this was a _safe_ house!"

"It _is_ a safe house!" she yells back.

They’re sitting inches from each other but the rattle of cracking gunfire is drowning out all other sound, dust from drywall is in the air and Natasha realizes she’s left her Glock on the table in the confusion.

There’s another burst of fire.

“Are these more ‘average citizens’ of yours?” James deadpans.

She glares at him – eyes conveying her profound want to _murder_ him, hopefully – and he meets her stare, asking, “So, am I allowed to shoot _these_ guys?”

“YES, IDIOT!” Natasha yells.

James peeks out from behind the couch and fires five rounds through the front door of Natasha’s apartment. When the outside gunfire goes quiet for a moment, Natasha jerks her head toward her open bedroom door. James nods. They need to put another wall between them, because multiple hits from rifle bullets will make quick work shattering the outside brick of her building and leave plenty of holes for other bullets to fly through. They stay low and James provides cover fire as they quickly dart into her bedroom and press their backs against the interior wall.

"Naaaataaashaa,” a man's sing-song voice echoes from outside.

"You have got to be kidding me," James glares over at her.

She shushes him, tries to listen to the voice. The cockney accent sounds slightly familiar to her, but she needs to see the face to make sure.

“The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout…. down cameee the rain….”

Another rapid-firing of bullets tears through the front door, and seconds after there’s a loud pounding and it gives way under someone’s kick.

James rolls his head against the wall, gives her a sidelong glance. “You must get this a lot.”

“Comes with the name,” she shrugs.

The mercenaries make no move inside – they aren’t fools, they know the Black Widow has too many tricks up her sleeve.

“And washed the spider out…ouuut came the sun…”

“If I die while some jackass serenades us with a lullaby, _I swear to god_ , Romanoff,” James hisses.

“Quit whining, Barnes.”

“Nataaasha, come out, don’t you want to see your old friend?” the voice says.

Natasha twists her head, can see Lee Wright standing outside her destroyed apartment wall and the remains of her front door, smoking a cigarette with four mercenaries carrying M4 carbines beside him.

“Wright, fifteen years is a long time to hold a grudge. I thought you would’ve moved on by now!”

“Move on? Natasha, I’ve been waiting for this moment. Every night before I went to sleep in that shithole I dreamed of this moment. Dreamed of getting the illusive Black Widow.”

“Aw, you thought of me all these years. That’s sweet!” she shouts.

“Still that same smug mouth on you, I’ve been waiting to wipe it off.”

Wright raises a hand and the men with him shoot through the opening of the front door, bullets ricocheting off the inner walls of her apartment.

“What the hell did you do to piss this guy off so much?” James asks.

“I might’ve… intercepted a buy of his back in 2000 and landed him fifteen years in a Korean prison.”

“Huh,” James turns, pulls the trigger of his gun. “That’ll do it.”

“This isn’t going to work. You’re going to run out of bullets soon. We’re sitting ducks like this,” Natasha says, glancing at James.

“And?” he gives her an incredulous look. “What do you expect me to do about it? Your faulty perimeter security isn’t really _my_ problem.”

"Well, you're the one with a metal arm."

"Bullets don't bounce off me, Natalia!" he throws his hands up in the air, wildly gesticulating at his chest area as if to make his point clearer.

Another crack of single fire goes off near them.

“Then, do you have a plan?” she asks, wincing slightly when the gunfire sounds off, far too close for comfort.

“Uh, yeah...I've got...a rough approach,” he says.

Natasha’s mouth opens, just about to tell him she’ll figure something out –

"Hey, buddy, you want Natasha? I'll make you a trade,” James yells when the gunfire stills. “I'll hand her over and you let me walk out of here!”

Natasha slams her head against the wall. Of course that's his first plan.

"For the record, I hate this plan," she says.

" _For the record_ , I don't care," he snaps.

He extends a hand, and she takes it. He hauls her to her feet.

“Hold your fire,” Wright says to the other men before raising his voice. “And who might you be? The Widow’s newest squeeze?”

“Seriously?” James leans past the edge of the wall, shows Wright his face. “What do you think I am? Crazy?”

This earns a laugh from Wright, and an eye roll from Natasha.

“I’m her muscle. She hired me because she’s been fending off attacks like this for months, but I know when to back out of a bad deal,” James continues. “I value my skin more than I value money.”

“All right, all right. Bring her out and you can live. I just want the Widow.”

James places the barrel of his gun to Natasha’s back and leads her, slowly, out of the room.

“I’m coming out!” James shouts. “Hold your fire, or I’ll shoot her myself.”

“You got this?” he whispers directly in her ear.

She snorts. “Of course.”

As soon as they pass the opening of her bedroom door, Natasha activates one of the galvanic sensors on her bracelet, slides out two discs, flicks her wrist, and sends them flying through the air toward the mercenaries. The discs release a blinding flash of light and smoke, disorienting the five men.

Natasha sprints forward and launches herself at one of the mercs outside, wraps a leg around his shoulder and shocks him at the base of his neck, sending electrostatic volts straight through him from her gauntlets. He collapses to the ground, and Natasha rolls right off his body. She swipes her leg up, kicks the assault rifle out of the second merc’s hand, then kicks the third merc straight in the groin, and knocks him off his feet. Without losing momentum, she lunges to a standing position, and incapacitates the second merc before he can grab his weapon with a precisely aimed blow to the throat.

James puts a bullet in the last merc’s skull, and his body slumps to the ground. Natasha grabs Wright by the back of his hair. His cigarette flies out of his mouth when she slams his face into the bullet-ridden wall of her apartment. She breaks his trigger finger for good measure, and his handgun slips out of his grasp as he falls to his knees.

“Do you mind?” Natasha glances to James and holds out her hand.

“Natasha, come on, can’t we work something out here?” Wright groans in pain.

“Why, so you can come after me again?” she wags her finger at him. “I don’t think so.”

James places the hilt of a Gerber MK II knife in her palm. He may not be programmed to kill anymore, but that apparently hasn’t changed his preferred style of weaponry.

“Make it quick,” he says.

“Gladly.”

She draws the blade across Wright’s throat, and he falls face-forward into concrete.

“Thanks,” she says, handing the knife back to James.

He simply grunts. “Maybe, just _maybe_ , you could have mentioned this to me.”

Natasha knows he’s not happy, probably because for the first time in a very long time he dropped his guard and it came back to bite him in the ass. She feels a little bad she didn’t inform him of this possibility for that reason. Her training and her experience working over countless marks tells her the best thing to do in this situation would be to apologize, to reestablish trust with the asset but… he’s not an asset, and really it’s not as if she _expected_ anyone to find her so easily. It was a safe house, after all. She even took great care selecting this particular location for the lack of tenants.

“Oh, _James_ ,” she pouts her lip and places a hand to his chest as she looks up at him from lowered eyelashes. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“You’re cute, but not that cute,” he smirks. “We need to leave before the police show up. They can’t trace this place back to you, can they?”

She gives him a look.

“Stupid question,” he says.

She laughs, and they both turn their heads when they hear sirens in the distance.

“Hold on, I need to grab some pants and shoes – it’s freezing out here.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t wear shorts in six degree weather,” he pointedly looks at her legs.

“You love it,” she throws back, sashaying into the wrecked apartment.

She manages to find her car keys still intact in one of the kitchen drawers and tosses them to him.

“My car is across the street in the lot, meet you there.”

“Grab my gloves and jacket while you’re at it!”

She gives him a mock salute and disappears into her bedroom; collecting her gun, her laptop – which sadly has several bullets through it now – and anything else she wouldn’t want the police to get their hands on.

* * *

James steps over the bodies of two dead men and three unconscious men, jogs down the stairs, and goes around Natalia’s apartment, intent on avoiding any potential run-ins with the police.

He clicks the button on Natalia’s key fob, finds a plain beige sedan. It’s cheap looking and doesn’t draw too much attention. He slides inside the driver’s seat, puts the key in the ignition, and brings the engine to life. He turns on the heat.

He leans back in the chair, eyes scanning the general area. No one is around.

A few minutes later she opens the passenger door and gets inside. He looks over –

She is in the _exact_ same pair of shorts.

“What,” he says, “I thought you were changing.”

She holds up a pair of black pants. “What do you think these are for?”

She throws his leather gloves in his face. He grabs his jacket from her lap, and pulls it on, hiding his metal arm. He pulls the gloves over his hands and – she can’t be _serious_ –

He immediately turns away when she starts pulling the fleece shorts down her thighs. Goddamn having mastered awareness of your surroundings and having perfect peripheral vision because he can see her black lace panties from the corner of his vision and he’s not even _trying_ to look – why is she wearing lace? – why lace? – why would she do that?

“You can watch if you want,” she says, tone thick with smug satisfaction.

He grumbles, puts the car in reverse, and grips the steering wheel hard enough to tear it out as he pulls out of the parking lot. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

Natalia has him drive back to the same safe house they visited before the consulate break in. He finds a place to park the car, and they collapse on the crimson couch next to each other. They’re both starving, but apparently neither of them are very good cooks and even if they were this safe house lacks basic kitchen appliances. She tells him it’s one of those places she has at the ready mainly for gun storage and as a last resort, which this…definitely is.

Natalia orders Chinese takeout – Chinese cuisine has become more commonplace in Russia recently, and she swears by a new local restaurant as being her favorite. When the food arrives, she hands him a stack of rubles from the safe and he pays the delivery.

They’ll need to buy new clothes tomorrow, he grimaces, looking down at his white tee stained with dried coffee.

* * *

In the middle of their dinner, one of the phones Natasha keeps programmed with the number she gave Sharon to call if there was an emergency starts vibrating. Natasha leans over James’ lap, fingers stretching as far as she can to the counter next to him. She feels him press further back into the couch. She manages to slide the phone off the table and finally pulls back, pushing a hand into his chest for leverage as she comes back to an upright position.

He makes a face at her. “I could’ve grabbed it.”

She ignores him as she answers the phone.

"Hey, Sharon, what's up?"

Steve and Sharon have become closer over the past year – Natasha likes to credit herself for this budding relationship much to Steve's chagrin – and he's shared information about the Winter Soldier's identity with her.

"Nat, I know you mentioned doing that job for Fury...."

"Mhm,” she says between a bite of a spring roll. “Something wrong?"

"The CIA's been tracking Bucky's movements."

Natasha sets down her chopsticks, and James gives her a confused look. The CIA doesn't know the Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes, nor do they even know about the Winter Soldier's existence, per se, but ever since the data leak they've become keenly aware that Hydra once had a master assassin at their disposal who worked for them for years. They assume it was several different people given the varying time periods. Most intelligence communities don't believe the Winter Soldier exists, but the records they've combed through of Hydra's have set them on edge.

"What do they know?" Natasha keeps her voice steady.

"They think he's headed to Russia, actually. They think he's after the same ambassador Fury sent you after. Apparently he's been taking out persons of interest with suspected ties to Hydra for months now, and they think they can predict where he's going next. The CIA has no proof, at the moment, that the ambassador is corrupt. Some people much higher up than me, though, are getting nervous about Bucky. They think he's a wildcard, they think he's turned against his employers and is trying to cover his own tracks."

"What are they planning?"

"They want to take him in. Quietly."

Natasha stands from the couch, edges out from behind the coffee table and begins to pace back and forth. She chews at her fingernail.

"I wanted to warn you, because whatever you're doing with this ambassador – you might run into Bucky. I didn't want you to walk into the same trap."

"Have you told Steve about this?" Natasha asks, and she sees James suddenly set down his food - intently focused on the conversation.

"I - uh, I'm not sure what to do here, Nat. This is technically classified information, I'm only telling you because I know you could get involved and I'm looking out for you. If I tell Steve I know he'll drop everything and run over there, and I'm not sure that's the best idea.”

“Sharon, I’m going to ask you to trust me. Do you trust me?”

“Of course, Nat,” she responds.

“I know the last thing you want to do is lie to Steve, but if he gets himself involved in this it could be a whole lot worse for everyone. Please, don’t tell him just yet. I promise I will sort this out.”

“But… how are you going to do that? I was calling you so you _wouldn’t_ get involved.”

Natasha sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose. “I don’t know, but I’ll fix this. Just wait for my call. And thank you again, Sharon.”

When Natasha hangs up the phone, she tosses it on the coffee table. It lands with a loud thud between them, and she crosses her arms.

“What was that about?” he glances at the phone.

“Sharon just called and said the CIA has been tracking you.”

His eyebrows rise in a hint of surprise, but he simply goes back to eating, shoving sliced sweet and sour pork into his mouth. He chews a moment before saying, “Well. That’s a problem.”

Natasha purses her lips, not entirely pleased with his frivolous attitude.

“When you came to my apartment, you said you wanted answers from Shaw. I know you want revenge, I’m not an idiot,” she crosses the floor until she’s standing directly in front of him at the couch.

He continues eating, completely ignoring her.

“You aren’t the Winter Soldier anymore, James,” she continues. "Do you realize the international controversy this could cause if you assassinate a United States ambassador to Russia?"

"It's not like either country has done me any favors," he says, and she sees his metal fingers squeeze around the chopsticks almost hard enough to break them.

He sets them down on the table, attempts to steady his hands. He tears open the plastic wrapper around one of the fortune cookies and breaks it open, throwing half of it in his mouth.

Natasha places a hand to her forehead, eyes downcast. "I know. I've seen both sides. I've seen how ugly it gets."

Natasha glances up when she hears him make a loud “ughhh,” catches him rolling his eyes as he throws the slip of paper from the fortune cookie into the middle of the table.

"How do you even still do this?!” his voice rises exponentially.

"What?"

"The politics, the covert ops, when you worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. Doesn't it get tiring?"

"Yeah, I – I guess it does. That's why when I had the chance to unleash Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D's files, I took it. Why do you think I've been out on my own? I blew all of my covers; I have to stay ahead of people who want me dead,” she places a hand on his shoulder. “But when it's done I'm going to let the world see me as I am – an Avenger. Can you do the same? Can you step out of the shadows?"

"The light never suit me, Natalia. You should know that."

"I used to think the same,” she rubs her thumb, digs it into the flesh of his shoulder through the fabric of his shirt, massaging the tense muscles there.

There’s a beat, and he stares at her for a moment, and she thinks she’s maybe gotten through that thick skull of his, thinks maybe he will take five seconds to rationally assess the situation like she _knows_ he’s capable of doing, but he springs to his feet and pushes right past her.

“How many members of Hydra have you killed?” she asks, as calm as she can manage. “You got sloppy leaving a trail like that. I thought you knew better.”

He wheels around so fast, sealing the gap between them in a single step, so close his nose is practically touching her own.

“You expect me to care about that? They deserve _exactly_ what’s coming to them,” he bites out each and every word with a razor sharp edge. “The entire organization needs to be rooted out.”

“And you think you can do that alone?”

“I think I’ve got enough blood on my hands for a hundred men over, and I think killing the remnants of a Nazi group isn’t going to make a difference.”

“Is this really who you want to be?”

“What is this? Are you worried about my unclean soul?” he leans over, lips brushing against her ear, and an involuntarily quiver of pleasure jolts through her. He laughs, provokingly caustic, against her skin. “….That’s touching, truly.”

She can feel the vibrations from his voice humming in her eardrum, filling the space between them so wholly it makes her body quake all over again with such an intense need she has to hold her breath.

She shoves him away from her. He scoffs, but keeps his distance.

“The CIA is waiting for you to make a mistake. They’re going to be nearby. You won’t be able to get in and out without being caught. They _will_ black bag you and not even I will be able to find out where they take you.”

“They can try,” he says flippantly.

“You're going to kill innocent men and women for doing their jobs? This is pathetic. You're still letting them control you."

He stills, every single limb in his body freezing in place. His voice is completely composed. "What did you say?"

"You heard me. The leash may be gone but you're still their dog. KGB. Hydra. It makes no difference.”

She knows she’s hit him where it hurts when he simply stares at her, eyes seething, fists clenched tight at his side, but offers no witty comeback. He makes a noise of disgust and turns on his heel. He grabs his jacket with one jerky movement and is at the door in three steps.

She follows behind him, arms crossed. “James, think. Use the good sense I know you have.”

When he doesn’t respond, Natasha continues, “I can’t let you do this.”

"You think you can stop me?" he asks, his back still turned to her.

She says nothing, but when his hand reaches for the door handle, Natasha grabs him by the forearm. When he whips his head around, she sees something primal in his eyes; animalistic. His eyebrows are low and his forehead creases in anger.

She realizes too late he feels like he’s been backed into a corner. She realizes too late he’s going to bite back.

In one fluid motion, he pries her hand from his arm; pressing her fingers back until they scream from the strain. Natasha punches him in the rib, hard enough to make him keel over for a moment.

"Finally!” she laughs. “This is what you want isn’t it? You think I haven’t seen it in your eyes when you look at me? Get it out of your system."

His mouth twitches in confusion, hesitating. His metal fingers tighten around his jacket, and his other hand forms a hard fist. His eyes flick to hers, and he pulls his lips back just barely – but it’s enough to give Natasha the impression of a snarl.

He throws his jacket to the floor and advances into striking range in the space of a heartbeat, right hand throwing a quick, precise jab in her direction. She spins away, turns –

one – two – three –

She slides back into range and her foot connects with his chest in a roundhouse and then a fast kick at his lower leg.

She’s not sure what this is. It’s not a death match, he would be fighting dirtier – they both would, but it’s not a spar either. He’s got too much tension built up inside him after being Hydra’s puppet, after being the KGB’s secret weapon for so many years. He wants to work it out and she knows he doesn’t know how else to do it but with her.

The room is too small for this; Natasha can’t evade his attacks fast enough with so little space for retreat. She ducks and hears the whirr of his metal arm pass over her head.

They’re not fighting, she realizes. They’re dancing.

She lands a hit on him, hard, a left strait directly to his face. His head snaps to the side from the impact. He steps back, places two fingers inside his mouth against his cheek. When he pulls them out, there’s blood coating them. He lets out a small, low, chuckle.

There’s a moment when she thinks she has him, just like she did all those years ago. Her hand blocks his metal arm and then grasps it tight, ready to use this leverage against him, but before she can make her move his flesh hand is at her throat and his foot sweeps under her.

He lays her out and her back hits the floor with an audible thud. He immediately comes to rest on top of her, uses his weight to hold her down, thighs clenching around her waist as he straddles her. His warm hand presses, softly, against her jugular.

She’s breathing heavy through her nose, and she can see the satisfaction plain in his eyes.

"Impressive," she says.

His jaw goes tight; she can see the tendons in his neck straining.

"Now, are we throu – "

She stops mid sentence when his thumb glides across her mouth, tracing the curve of her lower lip, and she feels her heart beating in the space between her legs, her entire body suddenly flooding with warmth. His thumb presses to the center of her lips, and then he drags it ever so slowly down, pulling at her bottom lip - wetting his thumb with her saliva. He runs his thumb all the way down her chin and Natasha makes a wanton noise in the back of her throat.

That same tension he’s been holding onto, that same tension pulsing through his veins and stretching taut through his neck unleashes and his mouth slams against hers.

She can smell the lingering scent of Hoppe’s gun cleaner against his skin and her own shampoo in his hair, and she breathes in the fumes.

Her hands grasp at both sides of his face, fingers digging into the space behind his ear. She tugs him closer and his tongue licks a path at her bottom lip, demanding entrance. She parts her mouth and lets him inside. She strokes her tongue inside his mouth, tasting the metallic tang of blood against his cheek. Her hand tugs at his hair, earning her a choked groan of pleasure from him. The noise reverberates through every inch of her body and echoes through decades of separation, echoes through until she is dizzy with the sensation and the memory of him inside her as they careened toward a state of certainty in a mess of deceit and unknowns.

The cold of his mouth coils around her, smothering her in the sweetest, most savage sort of way, and she sucks and bites at his lip greedily. It’s not the same as it was before. He’s not the same person he was before. It doesn’t matter. She wants him all the same. She will take him at his coldest, his cruelest, his most lost – she will take him in any way she can have him.

She hears something akin to a growl loose from his mouth as he tears away from her.

He bites into her breast through her tank top.

She slams a fist into the floor, nails scratching at the wood as his tongue laves and sucks mercilessly at her nipple through the thin fabric until it’s achingly hard and she’s desperate for actual contact.

He brings his lips back to hers, nose rubbing against her cheek and she tilts her head and slips her tongue inside his mouth again, kissing him deep and hungry.

His hands roam their way up her shirt, pressing and bruising against her hipbones in a way that’s heart wrenchingly too familiar, and then his right hand edges under the waistband of her jeans – fingers skimming at the sensitive skin there. He slides his body further down, and Natasha sucks in a breath when he runs two fingers over the fabric of her panties. He slides them up and down, up and down…pressing against the lace until he can feel how wet she is through it. She moans into his mouth when two fingers tease at her clit through the material, and arches her hips eagerly into his hand.

He’s toying with her, rubbing circles around her clit and – all she can think about is the way he felt inside her, the memory of him is so bone-deep she wants to scream – she bucks against his hand, tries to roll him over, but he presses her, firmly, back to the floor. He shakes his head and gives her a crooked grin as if to say “I won this time.”

He leans back down and presses his lips to hers in another desperate kiss. His metal fingers trail up past her hipbones, sliding underneath her shirt, and they brush along a spot on her abdomen.

He stills above her.

_Shit._

He pulls away from her mouth, removes his hand from her pants and lifts her shirt up.

His eyes go wide and his flesh fingers trace at the gnarly scar on her left side, and all the color suddenly drains from his face and she worries he’s going to be sick – the startling recognition in his eyes is horrifying.

"This. How –" he can barely get the words out. "I did this. When did I do this? Why didn’t you – why didn’t you tell me?"

"James…"

"No, I – the shoulder was bad enough. When was this? Before Washington?” his index and middle finger tremble over the scar. “How many times have I hurt you?"

"It wasn’t your fault," she whispers, taking his two fingers in hers.

He wrenches his hand from hers and stands, barely managing to straighten himself, and he stumbles out of the safe house.

Natasha lets her head fall back against the wood floor, sighing.

She slogs herself to a standing position and throws herself onto the couch, plopping down on the soft red cushions. She picks up her noodles, which are already cold – whatever – then notices the fortune James threw away earlier in a fit of exasperation.

She picks it up, uncrumples the small slip of paper, and reads.

**“AVOID COMPULSIVELY MAKING THINGS WORSE.”**

She groans and tears the fortune into tiny little pieces.

* * *

He returns a few hours later. He didn’t go far, he just had to get some space and collect the clangor of thoughts in his mind. Opening up to people, baring his scars and naked wounds, isn’t something he’s good at. He never has been. They’ll hear things he doesn’t want them to, things that will scare them away. Many of his memories of Steve have returned in the past year, and he was never particularly good at it with him either. He remembers feeling the need to present an image, a strong front, because Steve is and always has been a brother to him – someone he swore to stay with till the end of the line. It’s part of the reason why he never told Steve everything that happened to him during the war.

He hates to admit it, even to himself, but part of him knows Steve wouldn’t approve of what he wants to do to Shaw. Not because Shaw doesn’t deserve it, but because it’s reckless. He knows this, deep down. He knows he should appeal to some kind of… better judgment or better side or whatever they call it.

He tells himself there’s a good reason he hasn’t gone to see Steve, and maybe there is. Or maybe he’s just a coward. He tends to avoid thinking about it, if he can, to be honest. It’s just easier that way. He’s not the same man Steve used to know, and he’s not sure he can handle facing him – not after everything he’s done, not when the last time they saw each other he nearly killed him.

There are days he relives what happened on the helicarrier, sees it on a constant loop in his head. He remembers the fear and agony and desperation he felt then, remembers the way he wanted to shut it out, didn’t want to listen because if he listened then it meant this man was telling the truth. It meant he was a person once, a person with friends, with family, people who loved him, and he’s – he’s not supposed to be a person. Admitting to knowing Steve meant admitting everything was taken from him, meant admitting his target was his friend, and targets cannot be friends, targets –

The Winter Soldier acts because the mission –

The Winter Soldier has – has – protocol –

He’s not supposed to be – he’s not – he’s –

In many ways it's often easier for him to function during combat than outside of combat. During a fight, there’s something for him to do, somewhere to focus his mind. It was the same when he was the Winter Soldier. It’s still the same now, because after combat all he has are the consequences and the same nagging questions and guilt.

"Sorry," he stands, awkwardly, in the frame of the door, scuffing his shoe against the floor.

“Hey.”

She smiles a bit when she sees him, and it relaxes him almost immediately. He’s not sure why she has that affect on him.

“It’s not a big deal. We used to spar all the time, but I know you might not remember,” she says.

"I remember a… little from back then. But not everything.”

He wants to ask her to tell him everything, wants the answers to all the questions howling inside his brain but he’s afraid to. Maybe there’s a reason she hasn’t told him, maybe there are things better left unsaid. He remembers their first spar. He was not gentle. He was not kind. He trained her, and he worries how hard.

Some days it threatens to eat him whole – all the damage he’s done, all the people he’s hurt. He doesn’t know if he can take learning anymore. He shot her twice. It surprises him she even deigns to be near him, it surprises him even more she let him touch her.

“James, do you still want to get Shaw?” she asks, breaking him from his train of thought.

He runs a hand through his hair. “I thought you said that was off the table.”

“That’s not what I said, that’s what you heard.”

“No, I’m _pretty_ sure that’s what you said.”

“I – oh for the love of – just listen to me,” she bends over, props her chin against her fist, elbow resting against the coffee table. “The CIA will have to do all of this extremely quietly, they can’t risk letting the Russian government know they’re here. They’re anticipating this will be a tough operation, but there’s no way they would risk trying to go through legal channels. We can use this to our advantage.”

“I’m listening.”

“If you let me help you – we can get in and out with Shaw. We can extract him without the CIA being the wiser.”

“Now,” James rubs his hands together, places the edge of them against his lips. “By extract, I assume you mean torture, interrogate, and execute, right?”

Natalia laughs. “Very funny. No, you can’t kill him. We need to find out where he’s storing those tapes, though. Maybe if you’re lucky he won’t be cooperative.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” he gives her a small laugh in return.

They decide they will leave in the morning, and spend the rest of the night packing Natalia’s trunk with guns, ammunition, and any other tools they anticipate needing. He keeps putting extra guns in the trunk, and she keeps taking them out – tells him he’s over packing.

“This isn’t a siege,” she says.

He scoffs. He likes being prepared too.

Natalia tries to give him the couch that night, tells him she knows he barely sleeps, but this leads to another back and forth sort-of-but-not-really argument because he refuses.

“I’m a soldier. I can sleep on the floor,” he tells her.

Only he doesn’t sleep that night. He barely sleeps any night. The last time he remembers getting even an hour of rest in the past month is when he passed out in Natalia’s bed. The scent of her on the sheets, on the pillows, it was….familiar to him in a way he couldn’t fully understand. (He notices everything about her is familiar to him, perhaps it will stop surprising him at some point.) He knows the scent from her shampoo, knows because he borrowed it when he was staying with her. It’s clean, crisp, with a hint of amber.

When he hooked an arm beneath the pillow and buried his face in that scent, there was more there. There was a feeling. _She_ overwhelmed him _. She_ is safe.

 _She_ is… home.

* * *

“Did I love you?” he asks, staring out the passenger window of the car.

Natasha stiffens in her seat, hands tightening around the steering wheel. The drive to where the ambassador’s dacha is located on Lake Ladoga is six hours, but Natasha is taking back roads to avoid areas with a heavier concentration of police given the state of their trunk.

“I – "

“Sorry, it’s just. I see things, sometimes, you know?” he turns to look at her. “I see you. I remember your name, but I don’t remember the how or the why."

“I don’t know,” she says. “Love wasn’t a word tossed around in those days.”

“It’s okay. I know this must be weird for you too, what with my not remembering and all.”

“James, that’s not your fault. I just didn’t want to overwhelm you with too much all at once. I know how hard it is – trying to remember, I mean,” she glances at him momentarily. “It hurts, and sometimes you’ll wish you never remembered at all. I know what that’s like. If you want me to tell you everything, I will. I just didn’t want to worry you. I’m sorry.”

“The bullet wound. I was shooting someone behind you, right?”

She nods.

“I remember the wind, the altitude, the temperature… I remember all the technical aspects but I don’t remember the mission.”

“I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. He was your mission. You shot out our tires near Odessa, and then you shot him straight through me. I’m not sure why you didn’t kill me, though.”

“Why waste two bullets when I can get it done with one?” he tilts his head and lays it against the window. “You must not have been mission critical. If you were…… you’d be dead.”

Natasha says nothing more, though part of her doesn’t believe that. He never checked to see if she was dead. He left her there to bleed out, but that’s not a guarantee of death. That’s not something Hydra, namely someone like Alexander Pierce, would appreciate. She may not have been mission critical, but she was certainly a witness.

Ghosts aren’t supposed to leave witnesses.

* * *

They stop and check into a hotel in the town nearest the ambassador’s dacha for the night. They need time to do reconnaissance and formulate a plan of infiltration.

"Will I ever get back?" he asks.

The moon is filtering through a crack in the window's blinds, and he stares at the ceiling, unable to shut his mind off. It’s always been this way – nothing but disconnected fragments of information and synapses firing in all corners of his psyche as he tries and tries to put meaning to the shards. Even when he didn’t know who he was beyond the title of the Winter Soldier, his mind was everywhere.

"I don't know," she whispers back.

He knows it is the truth, knows she would not lie to him, in the same way he knows the address of every street they passed, the make and model of every car in the parking lot, the name and description of every single staffer they saw in the hotel lobby. Every exit. Every entrance. Every possible opening for attack. There is nothing that gets past the Winter Soldier.

There are things he knows, and he doesn’t know how.

He knows Bucky Barnes fell off a train in 1945. Bucky Barnes was splintered, fractured, and unmade. Bucky Barnes disappeared.

In his place, the Winter Soldier came and filled the space Bucky Barnes left behind. The Winter Soldier poisoned every single crack, filling every single little crevice in Bucky’s fractured mind with chaos and brutality. The phantom of Bucky Barnes was completely enveloped and overcome in the myth of the Winter Soldier.

How do you differentiate between two all encompassing identities? How do you know who you are when for years you've been someone else?

When he saw his face in the Smithsonian, it was like being gutted and shred to pieces all at once. A shadow self stared back at him through faded, black and white video reels and the man smiled in a way that was all too similar but eerily misplaced.

Bucky Barnes is a stranger to him.

Sometimes he wakes in the middle of the night, and he is scrubbing his hand raw in the sink, scrubbing away blood that is not there. Scrubbing raw until his palm is peeling, scrubbing as if there’s something buried under his skin, scrubbing until he is no longer imagining blood, scrubbing until he forces the blood to become _real._

And he wonders, hopes, prays, that if he just keeps scrubbing then maybe, just maybe, he can pry Bucky Barnes - this so called person he used to be who is straining just beneath the surface of him - loose.

But his whole world collapses again when he looks into the mirror and still doesn’t recognize himself.

His reflection stares back at him, and it’s the reflection of a war. A war fought in shadows and whispers. He _is_ that shadow, he _is_ that war. Less a man than a machine as he moves in between dark and light, blending easily in and out of warzones and across borders, blood red fury epitomized as clearly as the Soviet star on his shoulder as he culls everything in his path.

His hair is dirty, long sections of it falling over the right side of his forehead while the rest is pushed behind his ear, and there are lines of unspeakable weariness on his face. He questions how he even manages to get up in the morning at this point. There are circles under his eyes that have ceased to mean anything – the man staring back at him is no better than a hungry wolf, a carnivore who will never have his fill.

In 1991 the USSR collapses while he is asleep, entombed in ice.

In the confusion of the fall, Hydra retrieves him. He vaguely remembers Zola, remembers a procedure, but his mind is fragmented so much he isn't even sure if it's true. He remembers Zola experimented on him during World War II, before Steve saved him, and he often wonders if he can trust his mind's version of events. Was Zola the one pulling the strings, was he the one who made him into the Winter Soldier? Or is his mind confusing the two situations?

He knows Zola was recruited to S.H.I.E.L.D as part of Operation Paperclip, but he remembers a Russian soldier finding him near a gorge, can even see his severed arm bleeding at the stump as he's dragged across the snowy mountains. James supposes it's possible they put him on ice right after they found him, and waited to install the arm. He isn't sure, and Natalia tells him none of the documents she's recovered of Hydra's explain this either. With a data leak so huge, though, things inevitably get lost. They may be overlooking a key piece of intel, she says. He shrugs. He accepted months ago there would inevitably be things he may never fully remember.

Regardless, she can verify without a shadow of a doubt he worked for the Soviets for years after, and James knows he never officially became a tool for Hydra until after the USSR's dissolution. They knew of his existence, had a hand in making him, and he was possibly even doing work on their behalf by proxy of the KGB. Hydra infiltrated all levels of government, including the KGB, and at one point Natalia suggests it's possible General Vasily Karpov had an agreement with them. James remembers there was little the man wouldn't have done to destroy the West. The Winter Soldier was his greatest achievement, his ultimate mockery of everything America stood for. From 1983 to 1988 he accompanied the elderly man as a personal bodyguard, and Karpov's sadistic glee at watching the Winter Soldier defend his life was evident. It was possibly the only thing that brought the man a measure of joy.

When Hydra took him, the wiping became more severe. He can't explain how he knows this, not really, but he just does. There are more holes in his memory in this period, Hydra's methods were even harsher than Department X's were. They pushed his mind to limits he never thought capable of surviving, they reduced him to a shell of a human being, and sometimes it amazes him he came back from that at all.

He laughs, bitterly. As if coming back to this hell is a reward. Coming back to a world where he doesn’t truly belong, a world where he’s forced to remember all the awful things he’s done. His only happy memories are the ones he remembers of training Natalia, they are the only ones in color, and he doesn’t even deserve them.

A sickening screech of ripping metal echoes off the bathroom’s ceramic tiled walls, the noise floods his ears and images bear down on him from all sides. He squeezes his eyes tight, clutches his head with his right hand in a vain attempt to stem the electricity bolt of pain that’s racking its way through his brain. His teeth grind against each other like pieces of machinery being pushed past the breaking point, and his muscles strain under the pressure, under the weight of all the bloodied impressions searing across his blackened field of vision. He bites his lip so hard he can taste the blood on his tongue.

A screaming, industrial noise pounds at his eardrums.

Grind –

White noise – nails on a blackboard –

He staggers, his other hand catching the bathroom counter before he collapses on weak knees, but he grips the edge of the granite so hard it’s pulverized into dust beneath him.

Grind –

The noise evolves, changes, devolves, evolves again until it’s a twisted music to his ears – thrusting its way through like a knife – an eerie scream – his ears bleed – grind – white noise –

Stop – he just wants it to stop –

Grind –

A door in the recesses of his mind opens, things come rushing back to him in fragments, and he is suddenly yelling in three different languages –

Halt die Klappe! Hör auf rumzuschreien! Du machst es nur schwieriger! –

I was only trying to save my family! Please, I haven’t betrayed the Union! –

Onegai, yamete! Itaiyo! -

He sees the Winter Soldier’s hands – _his_ hands - maiming, torturing, and – and –

_Do you know what it’s like to be a passenger in your own body?_

He is vomiting into the sink before he can even catch his breath.

A few minutes later, there’s a shuffle of feet, and a soft knock at the bathroom door. Natalia inches it open. “Everything ok?”

He doesn’t respond.

“James, it’s three a.m. I – " her eyes widen when she sees the blood trickling down his palm. “Your hand…”

She opens the door all the way and takes it in her own, examining the raw skin. She glances over and sees the crushed granite of the counter, sees the vomit draining down the sink and on the front of his shirt.

She moves to the shower, turns the dials, and tests with outstretched fingers until the water is a comfortable temperature. “I’ll give you some space, but you should get cleaned up.”

He reaches for her, metal fingers tugging at her hand.

“Stay. Please, I – " he looks up and away. “I mean, if you want, that is.”

“Okay,” she nods.

They watch each other as they undress, not lustfully, but careful – observant. Natalia slips out of her tank top and pajama bottoms, pulls her underwear with it. He follows suit, pulls his shirt over his head and shrugs out of his sweats. Their eyes rake across each other’s forms in mute appreciation.

James steps into the shower. He feels the water, fiddles with the knobs a moment until the water is just past lukewarm. She steps inside behind him, feet silent against the acrylic tub. He brushes a hand through wet locks, his body involuntarily tensing in anticipation when she edges close to him, breasts pressing flush against his back. She takes his right wrist in her hand and holds up his cracked and peeling palm.

"Why did you do this?" she asks, barely above a whisper.

The water flows between his fingers; blood seeps out of the raw, spongy, patches of skin and thins beneath the spray of the faucet. He angles his head to look at her, eyes flicking between his palm and her face, and gives her a small, sad smile.

“I'm not a good person, Natalia.”

He turns to face her, and the warm water beats against his slumped shoulders, his back to the spray, tiny streams of it trickling down his metal arm.

Warmth isn’t something he’s used to.

There is still ice under his fingernails and ice in his hair every morning he wakes up. He will never forget the sensation of being thawed out, of living life in only brief bursts of time and seeing the world through shades of grey. Months after he visited the Smithsonian he realized it was impossible – he realized he would never truly be whole again. There will always be a chill in his bone.

He will never shed his skin and leave Winter behind.

Warmth doesn’t suit him. Maybe in the past it did. Maybe there was a time when cold objectiveness wasn’t all he knew. Maybe he used to be raw with emotion and passion, but the cold is all he’s known for so long.

Natalia runs her fingertips lightly over the angles of his face, grips his chin and gently lifts until he meets her eyes.

“Don’t do this to yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

Steam fills the room, and she inches closer to him, wraps an arm around his slick stomach. She rests her head in the crook of his neck, stays there, running her other hand back and forth down the scarring at his shoulder. His fingers brush over the scar on her abdomen, blood from his peeling palm running in red rivulets over her stomach through the water.

“I know I was only… their tool but – " he takes a breath. “I see my hands sometimes. Stained in other people’s blood. The things I’ve done. Part of it was me.”

“James…” she presses a delicate kiss to his neck. “Whatever you did – whatever was _done_ to you – all that matters is you’re here. Survival. That’s what matters.”

She runs her fingertips lightly down his metal arm, traces each indent of the paneling, and brings his hand to her mouth. She presses her lips to every metal knuckle, to every finger, to the back and front of his palm.

“I’m not a good person either.”

He creases his forehead, pulls her closer to him, hugging her with his whole body.

“Stop. Don’t say that. You are. I know you are.”

“I’m not,” she mouths the words against his neck. “But when you say it like that, I think I almost believe you.”

After a moment, she pulls away and places two hands on his shoulders. She gazes at him, long and searchingly. Tiny droplets of water slide down her cheek, down her neck, between her breasts, and James sees nothing but clear, unabashed truth in her eyes.

She looks at him like she's making up for lost time, as if she's seeing him for the first time all over again, and her eyes shine with such unadulterated clarity and understanding it blinds him.

All of his fears, frustrations, every nagging thought that's been eating away at him for months but he kept bottled up tight inside where no one would ever think to look comes out in a rush of words.

 “There's part of me. A part that still feels the Winter Soldier inside me. I still feel him in my hands. When I use a gun. When I fight. Even normal routine tasks, I feel him there. I know I’ll never be the same man I was before, but it’s – I try to block it out but it scares me, it – it fucking terrifies me, the things I’m capable of doing. The things I’ve _already_ done.

She presses her forehead to his, listens without interrupting, listens to the strangled noises seeping from his lungs, and watches as his eyes turn to glass as she wraps her arms around his neck and holds him tight against her form. When he’s with her he’s not the Winter Soldier. He’s not Bucky Barnes. He’s just James. He’s just лапушка. They’re just two people.

“They took so much from me; sometimes I doubt my own mind. But you – I think you’re the only one who understands,” he whispers against her skin. “I know it’s just a part, I know the memories aren’t really _mine_ , but….”

He trails off, and places a hand on Natalia’s cheek. His thumb glides along her wet flesh, and he traces the outline of her eyebrow.

“I think that part gets smaller the longer I’m with you,” he finishes.

In the old days, he remembers they spoke English most often to each other, but today Russian seems to soothe him, and Natalia murmurs soft spoken words into his ear. They press soap to each other’s bodies, let it melt to nothing under the hot water, careful not to slip or lose their balance, because even now, even though he doesn’t know how – she is his anchor and he is hers.

She leads him to the bed when they are through. She wraps his raw hand in gauze, and sits with him while he stares blankly through her.

There are things he knows, and he doesn’t know how.

He knows if he were dropped in the mountains or the desert tomorrow, with only a single canteen of water, he could survive with no supplies for at least three weeks. He knows exactly how many pints of blood you can drain from someone to keep them on the edge of life and death. He knows he is capable of murdering over fifty men with nothing but his bare hands.

Natalia tells him over and over Steve will understand, that all he cares about is seeing his best friend again, but he is doubtful. He would talk to Steve, he would go to him, try to piece together this man Steve used to know, but he can’t.

Does Steve know how to find the perfect sniper trajectory in any environment?

Does Steve know how to break every single joint in a person’s body?

Does Steve know what it feels like to kill mothers and fathers, daughters and sons?

Does Steve know how to kill a man in a way that will leave no conclusive signs of attack?

Does Steve know what it's like to walk through sprawling cities, through remote villages, and see children flee before his very eyes?

Does Steve know how to disappear without a trace?

_Does Steve know what it means to be a ghost?_

Natalia shakes her head when he asks her these questions, she chastises him in Russian, and he chuckles ruefully. No, Steve can’t possibly. Those are things only creatures of myth know.

He lies down on the bed and places his head in Natalia’s lap. Her fingers gently work through his wet hair, untangling it, and she massages his scalp in slow, unhurried patterns. He nuzzles closer to her and wraps an arm around her leg. It is only then the sleep that has been evading him for days finally comes.

There are things he knows, and he doesn’t know how.

He knows he was always lost without her.

* * *

There was a time when Natasha hated silence. Hated the empty, claustrophobic feeling of it. She would scream herself hoarse in the dark, aching to hear herself.

There was a time she was told to give away her name, her identity – give it away to a cause greater than herself.

But even then, even when so much was taken from her, she kept herself buried deep inside, and safe, where no one would ever find her. She kept herself. She will always keep herself.

My name is Natalia Romanova.

Deep inside she knows who she is, but she has lived so long, been so many people, and things…things get lost in the silence. Words have power. Words have meaning. Words gave her clarity, words gave her a purpose and words shape perceptions and influence people around her.

Silence is a dark, gaping hole, and truth is a matter of circumstance.

_Who do you want me to be?_

They call her by many names. The Widow. The Russian Avenger. The Slavic Shadow. The Red Death.

She has been everyone and no one. She has lived countless lives, and taken countless more.

They say the first thing you forget about people is their voice. You remember the general impression of faces, the way their bodies moved, but the sound of their laughter and the cadence of their voice is one of the first things to go.

In the night, he would whisper to her, though. He would remind her of her name, would remind her of his voice. But it was his face, and the outline of his shape that took so long to come back.

She remembers craving, alone and in the dark, for an unknown presence beside her, the gentle touch of fingertips light against the nape of her neck, and she remembers starving for a nameless and faceless connection while keeping her true self buried under layers and layers of other selves and holding people at a safe, but easily manipulatable distance.

Natasha grew accustomed to sensing each hurt around the corner, felt it twist deep in her gut and skewer her insides, but that hurt kept her going – made her remember she is alive. You can never truly master the art of losing. Given enough time, anyone can convince themselves that there is strength in solitude and freedom in loneliness.

But at night, his voice would speak to her, quiet and intense, and remind her of herself.

In the silence, she holds a man who doesn’t remember her. In the silence, she soothes his labored breathing and in the silence she is not afraid.

Once upon a time she loses a city, she loses a man, and once she loses herself. Once upon a time, she defects from the KGB and finds herself again, and once upon a time the man she thought lost to her meets her in that city all over again.

She has lived all of this before, and she will live it all again.

 _“Love is for children,”_ she once said.

The truth is, you can only love things you may lose, and Natasha never mastered the art of losing.

"You found me, лапушка," she whispers to the silence.

The silence swallows her words, and they drown in the dark, but she doesn’t mind.

Silence is a comfort to her.

* * *

_[Your name like_

_a song I sing to myself, your name like a box_

_where I keep my love]_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> would you believe me if i said my original intent for this story was like, at most a 10k word oneshot? I have no idea how I got here lol. please let me know your thoughts on the fic, i'd love to hear them!
> 
> Oh, and for anyone curious the lines James says are translated as:  
> Halt die Klappe! Hör auf rumzuschreien! Du machst es nur schwieriger! – Shut up. Stop screaming. You're making this more difficult.  
> Onegai, yamete! Itaiyo! – Stop! Please! You're hurting me!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know.... i know.... this hasn't updated in MONTHS. i never write multichapters (lol as you can see that's for a reason) and after writing 38k words - the most i've ever written for a fic before - i got burnt out really badly. but i'm so glad all of you have enjoyed what i've written so far. it means a lot to me! thank you for the support.  
> soooo without further ado here's a mini update chapter!

She is in the forest. It is snowing. Chill wind blows against the sweat on her face and moisture seeps into her boots. The acrid scent of rotting wood creeps around her and she can hear creatures rustling in the underbrush.

She knows this place. Too well. Too familiar. Familiarity is a mistake. When you become familiar, you miss things. Important things. You make mistakes.

_You are not afraid of the dark or what awaits you after the dark, Natalia._

There’s a voice in her ear, disembodied, like she’s hearing it from underwater. There’s a fog over her eyes, and –

_"Natalia, can you hear me?! Natalia, look at me!"_

She looks at her hands, looks down, looks –

She sees herself, a young girl, huddled against a tree, stuffing raw beans into her mouth from a jagged can. They are down to her last rations. Ivan is next to her, reloading his rifle and preparing to fire on the Germans.

"Listen to me.”

He turns his body so he’s facing her, kneeling into the ground, dirtying the knees of his pants in the mud and snow.

“If anything happens to me, you must run. You run and you never stop running."

Natalia nearly chokes on the beans in her mouth. She coughs out, “No! You said we would never leave each other’s side.”

Ivan grabs her firmly by the shoulders, shaking her. “You must!”

“I’m not a coward, Ivan, and I’m not a child anymore…” she sighs.

He pats her atop the head, paying little heed to her words. "I am so proud of you, my little girl.”

In Stalingrad, Natalia Alianova Romanova is pulled from a burning home. Orphaned and left alone without parents she has never known and will never know. In Stalingrad, Ivan Petrovich takes her under his wing and raises her among soldiers.

This is the only life she has ever known. Fighting. Running. Fighting. Running. This is the only life she will ever know.

She is in the forest. It is snowing.

It is always snowing. She is always cold.

She always hates it.

Natasha cranes her head, and sees herself splayed out on a bed in the middle of the forest. A woman with chestnut hair in a bun and pale pink lips lies beside her.

Natalia has become good at misdirection, lies, feints, playing along. She begins to mimic Katya's motions, changes them only minutely to make it seem as if she's done it a thousand times.

But Katya asks, "You've… never done this before, have you?"

"Why would you say that?"

She tries to cover the mistake, she doesn't think her cover is blown, but this is clearly something that was overlooked – something she should know. She has been a ballerina since she was a child, and yet –

Katya gives her a wide smile, laughing. "Natashka, how did you survive so long without breaking in your shoes? You must've gone through so many..."

Katya takes the pointe shoes from her hands, and begins softening the box.

"This is how I do it, but I like a bit of a firmer box. Some of the other girls I know slam them in between the doors to soften the box."

Natasha turns, and Katya's face disappears in a haze of smoke.

She looks down and –

Yekaterina is dead. Yekaterina is dead and her eyes are the eyes of a corpse, pupils hollow and void of any life.

In 1957 she marries Alexei Shostakov.

In 1960 she is front of a fireplace, a blanket around her shoulders as she warms chilled hands by the recently stoked flames.

"What do you think," Alexei comes into the room holding two bottles of wine, "Red or white?"

"Mmmm," Natalia hums. "Why not both?"

"I picked last time," he places the wine bottles in front of her on the floor. "Your turn."

"Oh, all right," Natalia closes her eyes and waits.

This is an old game of theirs, used when they’re both feeling particularly indecisive. Alexei shuffles the wine bottles back and forth and then tells her to pick.

Natalia knows exactly which wine bottle is which; she memorized his placement of them on the floor and followed the pattern of the sound. But every time, for some reason, she chooses the wrong one – not the one they both know she wants. Maybe she does it because she likes seeing the way his eyes light up and the way he laughs as if he's beaten her.

So, she chooses.

She opens her eyes, and for a brief moment all she can see is Alexei’s dark blue irises gazing back at her.

 _No_ –

 

_“Natalia! Don’t you recognize me?!”_

She is screaming, and the voice is yelling in her ear.

 _No. No. This isn’t right._ _The color is – is –_

_Wrong._

_Wrong. Wrong. All wrong._

_Some people just don't fit together, Natalia. This is what happens when two weapons collide. Destruction, tragedy. Weapons aren’t meant to touch._

 

Strong hands grip her bloodied ones, and there is a flash of silver, a glint of what looks like steel. She sees his eyes, they’re pale blue. Pretty.

 

My name is Natalia R-

My name is Natalia Shostakov.

My name is _Natalia Alianovna Romanova._

The Black Widow always survives her mates.

 

Natasha wakes up, water at the edge of her vision and his worried, but familiar, pale blue eyes gazing down at her. She’s been here before, lived this before.

"Natalia…" he reaches out to her, but she sits up in the bed, backing away from his hand.

“Sorry, I – ” she wipes the water from the corner of her eyes.

She hasn’t dreamed like that in a long time.

"I woke up just a few minutes ago. I tried to wake you…” he pauses, averting his eyes from her.

“What?” she asks, alarmed by the way he won’t meet her gaze. “Did I say something?”

“I called your name, and you kept saying…Alexei? Every time I said your name, that’s how you responded.”

Natasha swallows. “He was… my husband.”

James looks like the wind has been knocked straight out of him. He slumps back to a fully seated position on the bed.

“Oh,” he breathes.

"It was an arranged marriage by the state."

"Arranged? How – how long were you married?"

"Six years,” she says.

He takes a breath, and there’s silence between them for several moments. When James finally speaks, there’s a sense of creeping dread in his words.

"How long did you know me?"

"Six weeks…” she says. “Give or take a couple days a year later."

"Oh…." he breathes out again, seemingly deflating all together.

"Were you expecting something different?"

She doesn’t feel the need to explain herself to him. She knows he doesn’t remember, but she hates the look in his eyes. Even if she was married afterward, she doesn’t owe him anything.

"No, that’s not it. I just…yeah, it’s stupid," he shakes his head, gazes back up at her. "I guess I just thought maybe we knew each other longer, but that wouldn’t make any sense."

He laughs then, as if to cover up his own embarrassment, and drags his hands over his face.

Natasha blinks – once – twice, the realization of her own misguided jump to conclusions twisting in her gut. It is so easy to forget how little time they’ve truly spent together. It is so easy to reflect on the years she spent trying to claw the core of her memories back from the grave than it is to remember how the time they did have – the time they _could_ have had – was stolen from them.

They were a series of almosts in a world where nothing was certain. In that time, it felt like they _were_ each other’s world – the only respite available to each other in a place that stripped them of everything else. It’s only natural he felt like they knew each other much longer, but it’s not the length of time with someone that matters. It’s the depth of it.

She should’ve known better. James isn’t even comfortable in his own skin yet. He’s still trying to put the pieces together and simply doesn’t know how to react to her information, but he would never expect anything from her. He would never judge her, no matter what he remembers or doesn’t remember.

“He was a good man. Noble, and patriotic,” she says without thinking.

"That’s…that’s good,” he smiles. “I’m glad."

She drops her head, eyes refocusing on her hands in her lap. She can’t look at him, not when he’s being so – so _understanding._

Suddenly, she starts speaking about Alexei, about things she shouldn’t make James listen to – she’s not even sure why she’s bringing it up. It was a lifetime ago; it doesn’t matter, but…

"Alexei wasn't like me. He changed. The Soviet system twisted him into something I couldn't recognize anymore."

"I'm sorry, Natalia,” he places his hand over her smaller one in her lap, and gently rubs his thumb back and forth against her skin.

"He used to tell me I was like Russia’s winter snow. He said a man could freeze to death hoping to warm himself on my heart.”

_It is always snowing. She is always cold._

_She always hates it._

"Really?" James raises an eyebrow. "I can’t see that. You seem more alive than anyone I've ever known."

"I thought you didn't remember," she whispers.

"I don't. Not everything," he says. "It's just a feeling, I guess. I remember the way you used to look at me the first time we sparred. You were nothing _but_ fire.”

“People change I guess…”

“You haven’t,” he says, lifting her hand. “Not that part, anyway.”

He kisses the back of her hand, eyes never leaving her face. When she looks at him sometimes she sees the man who once stood outside a theatre with her and watched her dance. She sees someone who didn’t cave under the Soviet’s domineering thumb. She sees a survivor. When she looks at him, she thinks… she thinks sees pieces of herself. Almost like a mirror reflecting back at her.

He is so familiar, in so many old ways, but in new ways too.

Neither of them caved under the Soviet Union. They found their way back. James just happened to, regretfully, take a little longer.

* * *

Black bag missions are often broken into separate parts. Operatives are given discreet tasks to ensure secrecy, which means if you can figure out one piece of the puzzle, you’ve already got the upper hand.

Natalia explains to him that the Ambassador’s dacha along Lake Ladoga will more than likely be under satellite surveillance by the CIA. While satellite imagery is effective, it has a weakness in the fact that it only works when it passes over the house in orbit. Natalia can find out the satellite’s trajectory, find out when it’s not orbiting, and they can move in. The CIA’s bird eye will be dead and it’s a rather simple task for them to dispatch of anyone they come across.

In two hours tops, Natalia and James are camping outside a surprisingly modest looking dacha, and James is leaning against a tree. Well, ‘leaning’ may not be the appropriate word, more like edging closer and closer and –

“Will you hold on?” Natalia makes a tsking noise with her tongue. “Unless you _want_ to be caught by the CIA.”

James shrugs.

“Honestly, it’s easier getting Steve to listen to me, and he hates this kind of stuff,” Natalia mumbles.

Natalia has tried talking to him about Steve several times now, and every time she does James notices this faraway look in her eyes, the way her smile brightens when she talks about him.

He heaves a sigh. He knows he needs to broach the topic soon. He knows he’s been avoiding it – and Steve – for too long.

“Steve. He’s – he’s… doing good, right?”

Natalia meets his eyes for a moment before looking away.

“He would be doing better if he knew where you were.”

James runs a hand along his jaw and down his neck, awkwardly scratching at the skin there. He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t know _how_ to respond.

"He's genuine, you know," Natalia breaks the silence. "In a way that most people aren't these days. I always appreciated that about him."

James listens as Natalia tells him how she tried setting him up on tons of dates in an attempt to get him to break out of his shell. They both laugh when he tells her he used to do the exact same thing. It makes him happy, in a small sort of way, to know that even though he was gone for so long at least Steve had someone like Natalia with him – someone smart enough to keep him out of trouble.

He remembers Steve. The skinny kid he used to take on double dates, the kid who used to sleepover at his house on the couch cushions, the kid who was always getting himself into some scrape in a back alley.

He remembers Captain America too. The man Steve became after the serum. He was still Steve, but… different. Different in ways ‘Bucky’ probably would never get used to, because older brothers never do.

"He inspires loyalty. People would've followed him into hell. I would've..." he trails off, a sorrowful smile just barely touching his lips.

He _did_ follow Steve into hell.

"He does, yeah," Natalia says.

He sees that same look brighten her features, that wide smile, that gentle, almost dreamy look in her eyes. He slumps his shoulders, and – and well – it's absolutely absurd. It shouldn't be a thought his brain should even entertain, but...

Part of him wonders why she never looks at _him_ like that.

He can’t think on it long, though, because Natalia shoves him forward a bit and gives him a curt nod.

Time to move in.

**Author's Note:**

> for those curious, лапушка is a russian term of endearment. translated literally it means little paw, but it's like saying dear/sweetheart in english. it's a more sugary version of лапа and is commonly used for children and women and less often for men (hence the joke) but it can definitely be used for men as a legitimate term of endearment.


End file.
